My twinster and I are both the kind of excessively cool people that stay in on Fridays for the sole purpose of watching Say Yes to the Dress on TLC and commenting on everything, the dress choices, the dramatic stories, and of course, the crazies. For those of you that have a social life on Fridays, just to explain: there’s always someone on a wedding-related show who is just nuts. Like, full-on crazy. Sometimes it’s the bride who’s tried on 100 dresses and can’t figure out why she’s so confused, sometimes it’s the maid of honor that is clearly pissed off she’s not the one getting married, and other times it’s the bridesmaid who’s clearly pissed off she’s not the maid of honor. Regardless, when Twinster, mama B and I made plans to shop for T’s wedding dress this past weekend, we promised each other that no matter what, we would NEVER be like any of the crazies. So naturally, within 10 minutes of stepping into the bridal salon, I went from smiling and quiet, to a loud-mouthed pain in the consultant’s ass.
Let me back up quickly. I did not insult dresses T loved, or harass the consultant, or make snarky comments because I’m not the one getting married. In fact, we had a total freaking blast that afternoon, and the entire staff at the salon thought we were hilarious. But T, bless her heart, is the kind of person that was never going to have the big bridal moment, and she wasn’t entirely sure what she wanted in a dress, so as her twinster and her maid of honor, those duties fell to me. From the start, none of us really expected T to walk away with a dress that day. It was her first time shopping, and if you scrolled through her extensive board on The Knot, it became clear girl had NO idea what she wanted. So when the consultant started with “What are you looking for?” she got a panicked look on her face, stared directly at me, and I stepped in pretty brusquely: “She doesn’t want strapless, no cupcake gowns, a little poof is okay provided the dress is a trumpet or mermaid silhouette. Pure white is a hard no, and we like color. Beading and lace are okay, corset back is not. Go.”
As T stepped in the room to try on the first dress, Mama B and I casually poked through some of the dresses on the racks, laughing at a few and sighing at the others. One dress in particular caught my eye, partly because it was certainly more “my taste” and less “traditional bridal,” and also because it just looked special, like something you want to see someone wear and wear well. Since we already had about 10 dresses in the room for T, I decided to hold on saying anything, lest I be the one to confuse her with even more choices. And then she came out in the first dress, and everything became very real.
T kept telling us she felt like a kid playing dress-up, like she wasn’t really shopping for a wedding dress, but I couldn’t see her as anything other than a bride, the beaming emerald ring on her finger and a flurry of dresses fit for a woman. But thing was, T looked beautiful in everything. Like, literally all of the dresses. So every time she came out and looked in the mirror, she’d say she liked it, and Mama B would say she loved it, and Mimi, our spitfire of an almost-90-year-old grandmother, was just thrilled to have been invited. This left me as the only one willing and able to say No to the bad ones. I mean, T is not the type of person that would wear a traditional bridal gown. So yes, she looked stunning when she came out in a satin mermaid gown with intricate beading along the train, but it wasn’t the right dress! It fell to me to be the one that did such mature things as miming a vomit face at a neckline that made her look like a linebacker (sorry T but you know it did), or say such helpful things to the consultant as “That lace looks like it went through a paper shredder.” Yes, it may have been on the harsh side, but apparently it worked, because eventually, the consultant pulled what she called a “wild card dress” based on my crazy feedback, and wouldn’t you know, it was the dress I’d nearly picked out for her before. When T walked out of the dressing room in that gown, call it intuition, or even twintuition, but I took one look at the smile on her face, and I knew we’d found the one.
People always ask us the same questions when they find out we’re twins: Are you the same person? Can you read each others’ minds? We’ll joke and say yes, obviously, but honestly, there are weird connections you have as a twin that can’t really be explained. Sometimes we’ll both have the same reaction to something that Mama B tells us, or sometimes I’ll pick up the phone to call her only to have it start ringing with her on the other end. Sometimes I’ll text her when I’m in a weird mood, and find that she’s experiencing the same thing. And apparently, when she came out in a dress that I’d had a feeling about earlier, we both knew in a moment that she’d found the gown. We still made her try the first dress again, still made her try just one that was super-traditional bridal, but when she came out for the second time in the dress I loved from the get-go, you could see it in her face that she didn’t want to take it off. As I mentioned, T is not the kind of person that would have the bridal moment, the tears and excitement and drama, but I absolutely am. So when she stepped onto the pedestal wearing the dress I knew in my heart was hers, just like that, I started to cry. “It’s your dress, twinster,” I told her, voice high-pitched and shaking with feelings I’d never had before. She took one look at me, as I desperately tried not to streak my mascara all over my face, and with a big smile of her own said “Oh for the love of God, pull it together. But yes, I think this is my dress!”
All day today I’ve been showing off photos from the weekend to everyone, so excited that “We” found a dress; you’d think that I’d be the one getting married for how excited I am about that amazing, wonderful gown. But she’s my sister, my twinster, and my best friend, and I can’t wait to see her wearing that dress, her dress, on the big day. Plus, now that she’s all set, we can finally begin the most important part of her wedding: finding my maid of honor dress!
Chronicle of a 20-whatever 