the racket

so the dress people suck.

we all know i'm losing weight. i went into the first appt making everyone fully aware of this fact. they sized me and strongly pressured me to buy the size that would fit my measurements at that time, overemphasizing that it wouldn't be a problem at all to alter it once it go here. the dress came in in only 3 weeks, a full month ahead of schedule, so we scheduled my first fitting for last night.

enter the scam.

when you order, you have to sign this document that states which dress your ordering, what size you're ordering it in, and color. under all this descriptive crap is the following paragraph:

ALL SALES ARE FINAL. No refunds, returns or exchanges.

Deposits and payments are non-refundable. Our staff will assist

in determining your size, but you, the customer are ultimately

responsible for the size we order.

did i read this the first time? no, not really. you tell me a bride that would! i just found the dress of my dreams. you could take a kidney in exchange for it and i probably wouldn't pay attention. if you have to have this particular statement in a document you make your customers sign not just once, but THREE times, you're scamming folks.

well, of course by the time i get there last night i'm down a full 8 lbs from the time i ordered the damn thing. the result - they have pinned my dress (with me in it), taking in a full inch on either side all the way to the floor. plus they've pinned the length. well, that was a shit-ton of pins. so i asked the alterations lady (for the 3rd time) if it wouldn't just be easier to order the next size down? "oh no, we can just take it in, it won't be a problem." i get out of the dress and come back out to find my seamstress lady doing some paperwork. i ask her how much this is going to cost. mind you, the fucking dress cost $500 to begin with. she hands me the requisition: $344 for alterations. $110 alone for taking it in on the sides. um, no. big problem with that. she proceeds to tell me that since i'm still losing weight, they'll just leave the dress pinned where it is now, and i'll come back in on 2/1/12 for the final fitting. then she'll start cutting and sewing. it doned on me later that this is an additional scam. they're taking my money now for alterations they won't even do for 2 months. however, when i come back in 2 months, i have zero doubt in my mind that if they have to move the pins in even further, they'll find a way to charge me even more all over again.

i took my requisition to the front where a lovely large black lady was waiting for me. i looked at her and said "ok, now can we talk? i mean, no bullshit, just talk?" of course she said sure. i asked her what the big problem was with ordering a size down. she gave me bullshit. i asked her to please look how long it'd take to order the next size down and get it in. after looking in some binder that probably had pictures of some chicken wings on it, she told me "it'll arrive here mid-March." um, no. this one took 3 weeks from order to arrival. she looked on the computer and told me indeed it'd take another 3 weeks to order. but that was it. no "would you like me to order it? would you like me to look into it?" nada. i then informed her that i wouldn't be able to pay the $344 until the next day, and that i'd call with all my card info. yeah, i couldn't leave the store without signing an authorization sheet for the credit card. i signed it. you better believe i put a stop payment for $344 this am when my bank opened up.

so i'm screwed. i now have a dress that will be a total 2 sizes too big come february. they prey on brides and it's very disturbing. i now realize that it's just like a car dealership, but with more fat and bad makeup. they don't really make a lot of money on the dresses themselves. they make their money in alterations. because they charge you roughly the cost of your dress to alter it. it's a racket. and it really gets me.

so, my new plan is to find someone i actually like to do the alterations on my dress. anyone know of anyone out here in LA for alterations?

i go pick up the dress tonight. luckily i wore my ironman neon red kswiss tennies for the event. watch the 10 o'clock news, might be interesting...

woot fucking woot

guess who's down 21lbs??!!! oh, that'd be ME.

i think this is a terrible pic of me, but it's the perfect picture that fits my elation over my success thus far.

yesterday i began my 7th week on this diet. 7th full week, not counting the 4 days i put in prior to my trip home. 7 weeks and 21 lbs. that's damn good.

my new worry is my wedding dress. we ordered it based on the size i was at the time. that was 3 weeks ago. i'm down 8lbs since then. they said they can alter any dress up to 2 sizes before the shape of the dress becomes compromised. but the way i see it, why alter when you just need to send the damn thing back and order a smaller size? because the store doesn't nail down any alteration fees if you do that! well those bastards aren't getting me man. i have my first official fitting tomorrow after work. we shall see!

camping trip

dave and i were supposed to go to las vegas this past weekend for the rock 'n roll half marathon in vegas. we were pretty excited about the race, but when we looked at the overall expense of the trip, we decided against it. instead we decided to go to joshua tree and camp overnight.

long story short (go here for our new website), dave proposed to me. i'm so relieved to finally come out with it all! the engagement was perfect, something i'll cherish for the rest of my life.

i've been going a bit nuts here. we had been tentatively planning to do a wedding in june out here, small but in california, small still doesn't mean less expensive. the more and more we thought about it, the more we realized we really didn't want to mess with all the wedding crap. we just want to be married. that's when i started pricing everything. we truly realized we could be a couple in santa barbara, so we wanted to do it there. i sat down and started actually planning it, and immediately lost my mind. we talked and the option of doing it on the cruise presented itself. voila.

i didn't want to announce anything on fb or to our general group of friends until we were formally engaged. it's weird telling people you're getting married and then have that awkward moment where the stare at your left hand, only to see my gnawled off stubs and no diamond. luckily i no longer have to do that. and if you couldn't tell, i'm a little proud of the one he got me. totally caught me off guard. in a great way!

the fam is pretty excited. the wedding will be on the beach of grand cayman island. 2.23.12. great date. i was going for 2.22.12, but it turns out that's ash wednesday and you can't get married in jamaica on ash wednesday. keep up-to-date with wedding stuff on the website i linked above. i already found my dress even! found it, tried it on, ordered it, and paid for it all in one day. i'm good.

had to close with a cute fam pic from the camping trip. it's not the best of the ones we took, but all the others are annoying because my shadowed arm take up the entire bottom and it drives me crazy.