About nine months ago, Benny naively trusted me to do the bookkeeping for his company while he was away on a business trip. The reason I majored in Communications was strictly to avoid College Algebra, so why would this guy trust me with his books? But, they do say love is blind…and that desperate times call for desperate measures.
As he began to travel more, my duties of calculating payroll, managing the house and running after the fugitive dog Benny calls “ours” only increased. It was time to ask for a promotion.
A few months later, I was presented with an enticing proposal (which came in the form of a sailboat ride and a few round-cut diamonds). I’m a sucker for good people holding bright shiny things, so I accepted his offer. And since I wanted to start my new gig on the right foot, I quickly began to shop for the perfect first-day outfit.
I walked into the bridal boutique with an ad of a wedding dress I tore from a magazine a few weeks earlier. I was completely certain that what I held in my hand was, indeed, my dress. It was exactly what I wanted down to the cut, the color and the minimum-yet-stunning embellishments. The sales associate pulled it from the secret backroom and handed it to me to try on. Complete perfection. It was love at first sight.
After a quick and intense love affair, I realized the price was more than what I was willing to pay. The dress broke my heart.
My mother urged me to try on more styles, but I felt sad and defeated, and I was convinced I would never feel the same way for another gown. Nonetheless, I pushed through it and tried everything from a well-structured Vera Wang and an over-the-top ball gown by Monique Lhullier to a free-spirited lace number and, even, a dress by a Cuban designer (my mom’s request, of course)—that I swear—made me look like a rumba dancer. Cha-cha!
An hour and a half later, I had tried on more than 10 dresses. It was total fun, but at the same time exhausting. I was ready for my dress to walk into the fitting room. I had reached a point where I wanted to go to that secret room in the back and take control of my own destiny! Where is my dress, I thought? Aren’t you just supposed to know when you find it? Am I missing the signs? I even second-guessed myself and thought about relapsing with the initial dress that obviously wasn’t the right fit for me.
I was getting ready to leave when the sales associate came in with a final dress. It was in my price range, it had some lace and it was the color I was hoping for. But just by looking at in on the hanger, I knew this dress wasn’t my style. There were these ruffles on the bottom that frightened me, it was a little puffier than I expected, and it was by that rumba-dress Cuban designer, oy. But obviously, my other choices weren’t working for me, so I decided to be flexible and try on the dress.
I’m not trying to be overly dramatic or seem like an amateur novelist who embellishes her sentences with flowery emotions in order to seem like, well, a novelist. The truth is: I looked at myself in that dress—one I would have never picked—and felt at peace. Calm. Happy. Safe. And in love.
My journey to finding the perfect wedding gown was very similar to finding my perfect wedding partner. A few years ago, I came to the universe and showed her a picture of exactly what I wanted (or thought I wanted) in a partner. No doubt, she granted it to me. And when it wasn’t the right fit, I was forced to try on other styles—some that my peers told me to try on; some that my ego told me to try on; and even some that my mother told me to try on. Although the process was at times exhausting and annoying, that’s when I learned what I liked and didn’t like. When I came in with my picture, I had no idea what that really meant. I needed to shop around first and try on things that were completely the wrong fit, in order to know what it felt like to try on the right one.
And let’s be honest: deep down inside, I never thought I wouldn’t find my dress. After all, there’s something for everyone out there. You just have to enjoy the process, be flexible—and twirl around a little bit.
