V.I.B. August 17, 2007

I went to a bridal expo last night. 
 
I did not seek out the bridal expo. As with all things that one should be wary of in life, the bridal expo aggressively sought me out via emails from some “future bride” list that I apparently stumbled onto (The Knot, I blame you) and phone calls from one of M’s friends – a fellow bride – who heard a rumor about “free drinks” and “lots of swag” and thus convinced me to attend.  
 
I could sum up the experience by saying this: we walked in at 6:37pm and walked out at 7:28pm and were sitting in a bar, two rounds each in front of us, by 7:36pm. I exaggerate not.
 
The minute I was handed my V.I.B. sticker (that’s Very Important Bride, duh), I knew I should’ve turned around and walked out. However – as I am very, very good at ignoring my gut instincts (it’s an art, really) – I did not. And before I knew it, BrideFriend and I were quickly escorted from the peaceful lobby of the hotel into a ballroom that… 
 
Well, there’s no good way to explain it. The best picture I can paint is this: you know when you’re walking through a department store to get to the rest of the mall? And inevitably you have to walk through the cosmetics section, because the cosmetics section is usually the part that connects the department store to the rest of the mall? And suddenly you go into ninja mode as you are forced to dodge aging women who took their make-up cues from a pastel clown as they try and spritz you with “this season’s hottest scent”?
 
Yeah, it’s kind of like that. Times five hundred. Except, instead of perfume, you are bombarded with pamphlets (tuxedos! Limos! Cake! Zoom tooth whitening system?) and it’s kind of like a casino in that it is designed to keep you in at all costs. And there is NO BAR, as we found out after a few laps around the perimeter. We even eventually asked one of the women running the expo about, you know, whether there was any place to get a glass of wine or eleventy thousand and she looked at us as if we had just asked if we could eat her arm, as we hadn’t had lunch and were kind of hungry…that’s how horrified. 
 
There were brides everywhere: fat brides, skinny brides, young brides, old brides. And all of them were pushing and pulling and basically acting the way you expect people to act during a riot or a Barney’s warehouse sale.  
 
“This is, like, our Bridal Class of ’08,” BrideFriend said to me, wide-eyed, as we got jostled near the Fortunoff booth. 
 
“I weep for the future.”  
 
Ultimately, we did what any self-respecting anti-brides with slight claustrophobia would do: we quickly hit up all the tables that were handing out free gifts (I now have enough Redken hair products to keep an entire southern sorority coiffed for two semesters) and then we got some cake (delicious! Though when is cake not delicious, I ask you? Or am I just very liberal with how I feel about cake?) and then we stood awkwardly against a wall while waiting for the bridal fashion show – the “highlight” of the evening - to begin. 
 
“So. Um. Yeah, this fashion show should be, um, interesting and, um, I’ve never really been that into David’s Bridal but, um, I hear they have good bargains and…” 
 
“Do you want to leave?” 
 
“I thought you’d never ask.” 
 
We ran out of the ballroom like we were being chased, which we probably were, because those tuxedo guys were aggressive. We made a beeline for the first bar, even though we happened to be in Times Square, threw our 547 (approximate) bags in a booth and begged the server to bring us drinks (and fried food, natch) as fast as he possibly could.
 
I was overstimulated for the rest of the night, unable to focus on even The Fashionista Diaries or Big Brother (that’s when you know its bad). I know that this all sounds dramatic – I mean, it was a glorified trade show for brides, no one should have left feeling like they’d just been through a warzone – but for someone who values her personal space and her unbruised skin and the fact that no means no (I’m looking at you, tuxedo guys), it was kind of a traumatic experience. 
 
However, as I emailed to BrideFriend this morning, we may never be the same, but at least we got some free cake out of it.