I went wedding dress shopping in Iselin New Jersey with Nita. It was fantastic of her to drive us up there.
But talk about an overwhelming experience!
First of all, Iselin is like a Chinatown, except Indian. There is Indian fast food, shops all over the place selling indian videos and such, all sorts of indian clothing shops, indian jewelry – and almost every person we saw on the street was of indian descent. In fact, I think the only european americans we saw all day were the cops and a few at the indian buffet we had for lunch.
Many of the dress shops we entered sold more material than actual dresses, I suppose most basic indian dresses aren’t terribly complicated to make if you know what you’re doing. Of course I’m not going to do such a thing, so we had to just hit the shops that worked in pre-made.
The first shop we went into that we could serious consider things in was a disappointment. There was a whole separate room for wedding dresses, and although the prices were generally reasonable, the feel was high pressure and a bit snobby. The woman helping me actually laughed at me when I told her my price range and the colors I liked. It would seem that she was one of those types that hated that I was some white American girl trying to steal her culture. I decided right then that I wouldn’t be shaken by people holding such distain. She really tried to push me into getting one dress, which I liked, but I couldn’t fit the top on – she said it could be custom fitted, but I don’t want to commit to a custom fit before I know how it looks on me! This is why I’m shopping in real stores! I managed to leave that store eventually, the woman wasn’t too happy though. Sheesh.
We then visited a few other stores. I hate shopping for clothes, and this experience was even worse. The pressure is really on when you’re deciding what dress to wear at your wedding. You’ll have those wedding pictures forever! So many people will see them for years! AAAHH! A couple shops we went to were way out of our price range, nice wedding “boutiques” that informed me that I’d have to spend $2K on any dress that had lasting quality to it. Lasting quality? Do I want it to be durable too? Gosh, I’m only planning on wearing this ONCE! I want it to look nice, but I don’t need something that is hand-woven and hand stitched that took 300 man-hours to create.
About an hour into our search I was feeling very discouraged, and it was hot out. I was getting to the point where traditional wedding dresses were looking great and I almost wanted to tell Nita that we were just going back to KoP to hit a David’s Bridal. Nita admitted that she was concerned that we’d either leave with nothing or I’d be so frustrated that I’d wind up buying something that was “good enough”
Finally we arrived at Deen Fashion, 1405 Oak Tree Rd. It was a decent looking place, just selling dresses and the decor was not intimidatingly rich. I went to the counter and told the woman what I was looking for and my price range. She didn’t laugh or snicker, she just went with us through the shop and showed me dresses in my price range.
That’s when I found it. The perfect pink and off-white dress.
I tried it on, and it fit, only needing some minor adjustments. The woman at the shop said she’d give me a slight discount so the dress would be more within my price range (nice!) and that since the alterations were so simple and I lived so far away that they could be done that afternoon and I could take the dress home. EXCELLENT!
It was about 2:30 in the afternoon by this time. I was so excited to have found something. We hit an indian buffet for lunch, which I enjoyed but I’m not so sure about what Nita thought (which made me feel a bit bad, I offered to buy her a hamburger once we left town). After lunch we went looking for something for Nita to wear at the wedding but didn’t end up finding anything, she’s going to do some browsing online and let me know when she’s found something.
We left Iselin around 5. PHEW!