Sunday, January 14, 2007

Da Dum De Dum

This past weekend I traveled up to the bay area to help my sister look for wedding dresses. Rebekkah came down from Ukiah on Sat. morning as well to join the mission. Man did she come prepared! It's a good thing her sister Erica got her a gigantic purse for her birthday last year. Her stash included: a comb, floss, deodorant, pepper spray, wheat thins, a toothbrush, a TV controller, poker chips, suntan lotion, etc. The only thing she needed that she didn't have was a lint roller

Our first stop was Trudy's Bridal Salon. Right when we walked in, it was a total mad house! There were brides and their entourages EVERYWHERE! I think one group may have had 10 people! I told Rebekkah that we should have brought the pepper spray! Trudy herself was even there, and you could tell she was the customer service queen. We got matched up with Shelia, who then started to get some details from Amy about what she was looking for. However Amy had no idea what kind of dress she wanted. I told Shelia babe to just bring a variety, and before she left she asked Amy what she thought about strapless, and she said that is fine with her. So w/in our hour appointment I think she only had time to try on 6 gowns. But the thing is, is that Shelia babe only brought out STRAPLESS dresses and one halter! Did she miss the fact that we wanted a VARIETY of dresses? We realized after the fact that she was just bringing out what she liked! What kind of customer service is that?

After a quick lunch break, we were on the move to David's bridal. Now at David's Bridal you can at least take photos. At Trudy's I had to sketch the dresses, and let me tell you, they were pretty sketchy… specially my spelling. I still don't know how to spell tafada!

We arrived early so we could get a good jump start. We checked in with the lady and she told us that we could go look at the dresses but we couldn't put them in a dressing room! How lame is that? Let me tell you that it was NOT that busy… well not as busy at Trudy's! So we went over and started picking out dressed and hung them all in the same area.

I had noticed that the hair on the back of Rebekkah's head was sticking straight up. The chick was having some major static electricity issues. Of course it didn't help that she was leaning into the dresses and rubbing her head on them!


After awhile we got tired of waiting so Rebekkah when to ask the chick again if we could get a dressing room. Amy and I couldn't hear the details, but it sounded like she was causing quite a commotion… and we still didn't get a dressing room.

Fifteen minutes later we were in and on a roll. Well we were first told that we couldn't handle the dresses, so we had to take our helper lady, Irene, to the dresses that we had already picked out. We had a great system going too. I would help Amy get the dress on, and Rebekkah would hang them up once we were done. She was also the paparazzi and got some sweet shots.



I think we tried on over 15 dresses in an hour. We got to try on some different necklines which was really helpful. One dress was totally hideous but Rebekkah made Amy stand and pose for the photo anyway. Right as she's taking the photo, this older lady walked by and said "that dress is gorgeous!" We all looked at each other, and could hardly contain our laughter! I feel sorry for her daughter!

Our last stop of the day was at Elegant Lace. Walking into that place was like steeping into a time machine and being sent back to the 80's. The decor definitely needed updated, and all of the photos on the walls were of brides with huge hair, sleeves, and veils. Not to mention the grooms with mullets!

Even though we were doing the time warp again they did have all current dresses, and had them organized by style, and had photos of the dresses on the outsides of the bags.

They gave us stack of rings (think of shower curtain rings) to hang on the hangers of the dresses we wanted Amy to try on. We started to take a look and found A TON of dresses with all of the elements that Amy wanted! We were so excited and had a really good feeling that we might find the one at this place. We ran out of rings, so the lady came by and took some of them off the ones we picked and let us pick 4 more.

We head over to the dressing room and the lady told us that she didn't put them all in there because there wasn't enough room. So Amy started trying some on and then the lady took one out that she didn't like, then she came back w/ some rings, but no dresses. Rebekkah spotted that and said "I think they put some of the dresses we picked out back on the rack!" SURE ENOUGH! We went back out to the racks and found at least 2 dresses that we picked that they put back! What kind of customer service is that? So Rebekkah and I come back each with 2 and the lady, (AKA Slo Mo Davis, will explain later), and she says "No more dresses!" Excuse me? You are going to stop letting her try on dresses? It was still 45 mins to closing! Then she looks at one I was holding and says "Oh she won't like that one, it's too full." I said "Can I at least show it to her?" The nerve! So then she only let Amy try on two of them… one of them Amy picked out herself and they put it back! Amy even saw it and said "I thought I picked that one out." And we said "yeah you did." Slo Mo was tired and didn't want to finish out her work day… but that wasn't our fault! Obviously they were not working on commission!

Even though the customer service was very poor, they had a ton of dresses that had the characteristics that Amy is looking for. Hopefully she will not get Slo Mo Davis… but hopefully she won't get Geena Davis, who was even slower! She could have been an impersonator; she looked so much like her!

Unfortunately we could not take photos there either, so I back to sketching. They should totally hire me on full time.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Amber!

It looks like Rebekkah got you really fired up, like usual! What
goofy faces!

You guys had a tough job to do--esp. with Slo Mo! Amy will have to go back another day, since it sounded like there were some possiblilities there.

Thanks for bringing us up to date!

Jenna Hoskinson said...

How fun - i totally had a blast shopping for wedding dresses, and every store we went into let us take pics; it wasn't even an issue. How weird.