Thank Heavens for Personal Trainers and Grandmothers! :)

Let me give you the back story to my above statement. A college friend is getting married on April 19th and she asked me to be a bridesmaid. She chose a dress that is gorgeous on the model...but does not translate well to certain body types...mine included. We ordered the dresses back in December and because I had been measured for other things, I had my current dress measurements. I used the chart they provided to figure out what size dress I needed to order. Well according to the chart, I needed a size 16 because of my midsection (which is my problem area). Because the dress is floor length with a train, I knew there was no possible way that we could fix a size 16 to fit me (I normally wear a 6-8) so after much discussion with several people, we decided that it would be better for me to order an 8 since that fit all of my other measurements and go from there. Well, when the dresses came in in February, I tried it on. Let me tell you, it was the biggest mess I have ever seen. The shoulders of the dress stood out out and above my shoulders, the back of the dress was crooked, and the dress would not even zip (surprisingly, it had nothing to do with my midsection, it was my "barrel" rib cage that caused the problem!). The dress was fairly expensive (over 200 dollars) and could not be exchanged or returned so needless to say I was hysterical over the situation. My wonderful grandmother is a wonderful seamstress and has remade many a dance costumes over the year (she's so wonderful that she would even go in and resew stuff just to make it look less sloppy!) so we called her to see if the dress was salvageable. She came up there and after about an hour of messing with it, she assured me that she would be able to make it work, even if we added in material. Well, to make sure it fit, I wanted to lose some weight anyway so I called on a dear friend of mine who is also a personal trainer. We had a few sessions last year, but I got so busy I never met back up with her. Well when I told her of the dress crisis, she was eager to help and we got started right away.

This weekend I went home to do the final alterations of the dress (including deciding whether or not we had to add material YIKES!) and my poor grandmother had already spent 2 Saturday's taking apart the entire dress and sewing it back together to make it fit better on me, however, she was waiting to see if we needed to add material before she finished it. Her and my mom helped me in the dress and guess what....it zipped ALL THE WAY!!! I was so ecstatic!!!!Unfortunately, I had to calm down because the dress still had a lot of work left (that was the only area that fit at the moment haha) so we pinned and tucked and sewed and tried on all day Saturday. Then, my grandmother stayed up all night Saturday and worked on it until late last night. I tried it on one last time before heading back to Tuscaloosa and it fit perfectly!!! I'm so lucky to have a grandmother that would put that much time and effort into a dress for me :) She did assure me that when I get married, she wants to make the bridesmaids' dresses so no one has to go through that!

Anyway, just thought I'd share my exciting news. I'll definitely post pictures of me in the dress at the wedding next week!

Love,
M