Dress Disaster

So I have to go to this ball / prom deal at the end of the month.  I don't want to go into the details because I'm ready to roll my eyes off my head about the whole thing, but let me just firstly assure you that it is NOT a high school prom and I'm really really really really thrilled to be invited.

Oh, sometimes I forget you're reading this and not listening to my tone of voice.  I am NOT thrilled, in fact, I am completely underwhelmed by this whole thing.  It combines, very neatly, a number of things I find to be a problem:  shopping for dresses, dressing up and not being irritated, staying dressed up and not irritated, talking to other people who are dressed up and not being irritated, talking to other people.  So whatever.  I'm going, it will be fine.

I'd sort of put this whole dress thing on the back burner until the end of the month when I ended up clickclickclicking around eBay looking for a new purse this morning (the perpetual hunt).  And from purse, somehow I ended up clickclickclicking on bridesmaids dresses.  This is where I made the OUTSTANDING discovery that, hello, eBay is apparently the factory outlet for all of China as a whole.  These skeezy Chinese 'firms' (a loose conglomerate of what I'm sure is 5-7 pre-teens and a sewing machine) pull pictures of pretty white girls from the Internet who are having a perfectly fun time at some sort of formal sexy party, repost them, and promise they'll recreate them to whatever measurements you give in whatever color you specify.  Most include handy measuring guides and fabric colors too (along with the disclaimer that these vary based on monitors) to increase your confidence in their broken English.

Well, if anyone loves a good disaster, it's me.  I hatehatehate clothes shopping in real life and China promised to deliver me some obnoxiously poofy dress (where does one even find a poofy dress nowadays?) filled with lead and tears for a very reasonable price and that'll just come within the deadline and I'm sure will fit like some sort of miserable nightmare.  I got my browse on and compiled a list of the 9 most insane but potentially wearable dresses and sent them over to Vanessa and Roboco for review

These dresses were chosen for a number of factors, most of them combining their relative comedy, disaster, and potential wearability factors.  Each also would have to be a great dress to wear on the train and pretend to cry just to see what other people did.  These two were close choices but just didn't make the cut