Bridesmaid Dress No. 1

Remember the first few weddings you were in? Everyone was so young. We thought we were partying like rock stars. There was a rented bus, penis whistles and gifts of lingerie.

And in the 90s, we also had pink bridesmaid dresses. In fact, I had two baby pink dresses in one year.

I remember them both for two very different reasons.

One because we were able to rent -- yes rent! -- them. I thought this was a genius idea.

And one because I didn't sleep for weeks worrying that the dress wouldn't fit.

This is the story of the latter.

The bride-to-be had moved with her fiance hundreds of miles away. If I remember right, she first told us to get together, go to Madison and pick something out. We did get together. We did go to Madison, but we hit a lot of bars on the way there and didn't really complete the task at hand. If I remember correctly, the bride found a way to intervene from afar and at some point, we ended up at a JCPenney outlet store, ordering pink taffeta moire numbers from a catalog. I bought a size 11 and when it arrived at my house, it didn't fit. Wasn't even close.

I hung it in my closet, too scared to tell anyone that I was too fat to fit in the dress (as if a size 11 was fat ... but it was to me then) and too embarrassed to actually exchange it. At night I'd lie in bed and calculate how many weeks I had left before the wedding, how many pounds per week I needed to lose each week to get there. The week would go by and I'd recalculate, feeling my heart climb high in my chest and beat faster every time another week ticked off the calendar. I was paralyzed by the fear and shame.

I didn't try on the dress again. I was too afraid. I didn't know where to go to get it altered. I didn't know what I'd do if it didn't fit. Every week my anxiety climbed one notch higher.

The week before the wedding, I knew I couldn't put it off any longer. With my heart thumping in my chest, I mustered the courage to slip it over my head.

And, miracle of miracles, it fit. The same dress that I couldn't come close to zipping when I first brought it home zipped right up with no issues.

I stood in my bedroom mirror and looked at myself with my mouth hanging wide open. There was no way this dress should fit. No possible way it could fit. All that worry. All that stress. All those negative feelings beating on my self esteem for so long.

Never has anyone been so relieved. Never has anyone been so confused. Never has anyone believed in divine intervention as much as I did at that moment.