The World's Ugliest Bridesmaids

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I've known my friend Mhari since high school. And she's getting married to my best friend from college. These two owe me HUGE. But Mhari's maid of honor currently lives in France. So us guys decided to do her the signal honor of taking her shopping for her wedding dress in New York one weekend...

FYI: You won't see the dress that she's actually going to wear. Why ruin the surprise?

The Grand Entrance
While Mhari announces her presence, Darcy Katzin, Michael Neimat, and Aaron Lloyd find a seat within the waiting area of Kleinfeld. Mike, Aaron, and I fended off curious stares by announcing to the general public that we were "bridesmaids." Extremely ugly bridesmaids, but bridesmaids nevertheless.



This Year's Model
Darcy, Mike, and Aaron quickly formed an ad hoc committee to examine various dress designs. Recommendations would be seconded and a majority vote would take place in a closed-door session before being submitted to Mhari in triplicate with a receipt. This quickly degenerated into "I like this" and "You have no taste" followed by "Well, at least my mother doesn't dress me every morning" commentaries. Everybody thoroughly enjoyed acting like 12-year olds, while off in her corner...



Decisions
...Mhari perused catalog number IX of the 3,000 volume set describing styles for the calendar year. I think we're all in the wrong business. Who knew that weddings had so many cottage industries! Obviously, everybody else but me. At any given point in time on this Saturday afternoon, Kleinfeld had at least ten brides, each being attended by friends, family, and two or three assistants carting hundreds of pounds of clothes around. If the same amount of raw industry and investment went into the Cold War, the Berlin Wall would have fallen in 1971 and Russia would be the 51st State in the Union...



Bzzzz. Whap!
The entire place reminded me of a bee hive --- people in quasi-uniforms of T-shirts emblazoned with "Kleinfeld" running everywhere on errands and lavishing attention on the queen bees. And just like a bee hive, the male bees periodically are kicked out of the hive. Naturally, Mike, Aaron, and I were quickly shooed out the back door to the patio. I occupied myself by taking too many pictures of my friends. In this photo, you can see that both Mike and Darcy are thoroughly sick of me taking pictures. Seconds later, this photographer was smacked upside the head.



Strike a Pose
Mhari tries one on for size. Ain't she purty... Not too long after this, I was informed by one of the employees that taking photographs is prohibited inside the store (to prevent people from stealing designs). So I went into "stealth" mode, turned off the flash on the digital camera, and took the next photo...



Run Away!
Mhari moved at high speed throughout the afternoon. Try on a dress, spin and twirl, receive applause, spin and twirl, try on another dress, spin and twirl, get real dizzy, fall down, receive applause, etc. You know the drill. Darcy seemed like she was a huge help because she was the only person offering real advice. The rest of us just said, "You look swell!" Something about being near all these future spouses just brought out the "Yes, dear" that lurks deep in heart of all men...



Veni, Vedi, VISA
Mhari was all smiles as her dress was brought up to the front counter. She found exactly what she was looking for. So she turned and smiled, only to be blinded by the flash. Seconds later, she smacked this photographer upside the head.



Oh, What a Feeling!
Leaving the store, Mhari reached into her past as a modern dancer and performed the ancient, mystical, and time-honored ritual dance of joy that is known, to us laypeople, as the "Toyota leap." In anticipation of witnessing this rare ceremonial (which has never before been seen by scientists in the wild), I hid in plain sight in the middle of the street and captured this amazing image, which won the Foolitzer Prize --- the international Dutch award for photography while dodging vehicular traffic. Anthropologists around the world are still sending me telegrams of deep and heartfelt congratulations. The National Geographic Society's television special airs in early August.

 

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