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<p>My daughter&#8217;s wedding is eight months away. It seems like it&#8217;s enough time to get everything done, and because of my daughter&#8217;s extremely, shall we say &#8230; detail oriented nature, most of the big items are checked off the list. Except one. And it&#8217;s the solo task she has let me handle: the Mother of the bride get-up. Or, as I refer to it: &#8220;The MOB dress.&#8221;</p><p>It seems like it would be easy, right? How hard can fancy dress shopping be? The answer: Harder than you freaking think, when you have the body of a 12-year-old pre-pubescent boy. It&#8217;s easier to purchase a firearm at a drive-through in Arkansas.</p><p>I&#8217;m not a glitzy gal! I would wear sweat pants and a tiara to this wedding if I could get away with it. And maybe an undershirt. Comfort comes before glamour in my handbook, and that goes double for shoes. How am I ever going to make this work?</p><p>I was directed to the Nordstrom&#8217;s website by a friend who just purchased a MOB gown. Good God, this is turning out to be my Senior Prom, Part Deux, without the acne, and I&#8217;m already starting to sweat and wonder if my date is going to show up. He will. It was my husband back then, it&#8217;s my husband now.</p><p>I raked over that website for hours. I became bleary-eyed and disenchanted. It was all so sparkly! I hate sparkles unless they&#8217;re on a behemoth diamond ring or Barbie&#8217;s Silver Serenade ensemble, with feather boa! Not only that, but what&#8217;s full length on everyone else is car-cover length on me. This was a project for which I wish I had the cheat sheets beforehand.</p><p>I have a body that doesn&#8217;t react well to online clothes shopping. I&#8217;m short, but not petite. I have normal sized bones in a fire hydrant body. My seamstress is my lifeline and is listed in my living will as my next of kin. If I could just figure out where all the other Hobbit mothers shopped for their MOB dresses, I&#8217;d have better luck. Alas, I&#8217;m stuck with online adventures in car covers covered in tinsel.</p><p>My daughter, my co-workers and my friends scanned the available dresses with me. It takes a damn village. We narrowed it down to three choices: Cheap Vegas Showgirl, Miss America on Steroids and Vanna White, circa 1986. I hated them all. The one I wanted to choose, Nana Gets a New Housedress, was vetoed across the board.</p><p>Whatever. I&#8217;ll give them a shot and thank God for free returns.</p><p>Well, the MOB dresses arrived last night. I opened the box with cold dread. They all looked OK flattened out and shrink wrapped. Maybe it wasn&#8217;t so bad. I shook them out and hung them up. The sparkle made my optic nerves seize. I was going to need sunglasses or cataract surgery. Either way, I could easily wear these shiny uniforms to direct air traffic on the runway, or better yet, direct everyone who&#8217;s going in continuous circles after exiting the airport. Stupid circle. Sorry &#8212; stupid roundabout.</p><p>I sucked it in and slipped those dresses over my head. Dear God. The problem was really the same for each one: enough room around the chest area to house a gaggle of seagulls, and the voluminous amounts of fabric that needed to be removed from the length could fashion a dozen burkas plus a tarp. Lastly, they were U-G-L-Y.</p><p>I&#8217;m feeling hopeless. But I still have eight months. That&#8217;s plenty of time to lose enough weight to fit into Barbie&#8217;s Silver Serenade. I hope to hell she has shoes to match.</p><style>
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<div class="metaInfo"><bylineMeta><p>Maria Jiunta Heck</p><p>Life Deconstructed</p></bylineMeta></div><div class="metaInfo"><shirttailMeta><p>Maria Jiunta Heck of West Pittston is a mother of three, a librarian and a business owner who lives to dissect the minutiae of life.</p></shirttailMeta></div>

Life Deconstructed: Mother of the bride dress shopping: not for the weak of heart