Saying Yaaaas to the Dress

I had a lovely day this past Saturday. I went gown shopping.

A friend of mine invited me to a gala that was being thrown by a friend of hers. This is a fundraiser for a women’s choir in the Twin Cities. When I think of the word gala I imagine an event not unlike the ball where Cinderella lost her shoe. Opulent, grand, and countless beautiful gowns.

Of course, life isn’t a fairy tale and many words are used in a very loose sense. I’m sure “gala” is such a word.

Essentially, I have no idea what to expect and I said “YESSSSSSSSSSS” too quickly to even give it a second thought. Certain words cause my brain to shut off, and apparently “gala” is one of them.

Gala gala gala gala.

At any rate, I have a few gowns that I always imagined I would wear to a faaaancy event. I would justify these purchases with a very flimsy rationale like I needed them “just in case” and that I would rather have them and not need them instead of needing them and not having them. Which is rather silly. How many times have you been asked to attend a ball at the last minute and luckily you just happened to have a dress that is perfect for such an occasion?

Of course, when I received the invitation it didn’t matter how many of these contingency dresses I owned because I would obviously need a new one.

I called my squad and hit the mall. My squad being Shannonlee and my friend Sophia. As much as I love shopping I tend to get bored doing it. I suppose part of it comes from being overstimulated. I have gone shopping for gowns before but when you walk into the dress section of Macy’s and there are literally one hundred thousand dresses it’s easy for me to get overwhelmed. This adventure had a mission and I had to follow through. It’s always more fun to shop with someone else but my friends would be there to give feedback and help keep me focused.

I tend to have moments of imposter syndrome in situations like this. It’s not unlike a photo shoot. Like, what am I doing? Why am I doing this? Why do I think I need to do photo shoots or buy a fancy dress or go to a gala? It’s easy for me to take things toooo seriously. My friends kept the day fun and lighthearted. We marveled at the opulence of some of the dresses, we teased the really ugly dresses, and took double takes at the prices on some of them.

It didn’t take too long for me to have an armful of dresses that caught my eye. And girl, gowns are heavy.

Once I had selected about a half dozen I slipped into the dressing room. Dressing rooms, with all their mirrors and almost obnoxious lighting, can be humbling. An outfit, we hope, will accentuate the parts of our body that we like, and minimize the parts that we would rather not draw toooo much attention to. What I wear under a dress tends to be, well, functional. What I mean is that I have my corset and my breast forms. Dresses with a plunging neckline don’t really work for me since my breasts are, well, breast forms. It’s a similar situation with my corset. If a dress has an exposed back it will reveal my corset. If the dress has a mesh midriff, the same thing happens.

So, in addition to a dress actually fitting there are a few other things to consider. It’s not unusual for dresses to have wildly inconsistent sizing. I usually wear a size 12/14, depending on the fabric or style, but in my experience gowns are less forgiving. Most of what I tried on was, well, a larger size. I try not to focus toooo much on the number that is printed on a tag but it can bother me sometimes.

Each dress I tried on technically fitted. What I mean is that the zipper zipped. One dress was too short (I know, I didn’t think this was possible either), one dress was perfect for Pride but not the gala (I did buy this one as well), but among them, there was the gown I eventually purchased.

And I was surprised by it. I assumed I would select something black or pink or glittery silver or sparkling gold, but the dress is as yellow as sunshine. When I took the dress of the rack I thought it would, well, work. The neckline was perfect, I could still wear a bra (strapless, obviously)…

But yellow??

Also! selecting a dress that isn’t short or tight or doesn’t show off my legs was new to me. This was just one of the things I did that day that was out of my comfort zone.

Shannonlee and Sophia gave their approval, I changed back into what I wore to the mall, purchased two dresses and went into the ladies room and changed back into the gown.

It was photo shoot time, baby.

Walking around one of the busiest malls in the world, as a t-girl, is one thing. Doing so in a gown is another. I have always loved the juxtaposition that a photo shoot can be bring. Gorgeous lingerie worn in a dilapidated warehouse, for example. In this case it was a beautiful floor length gown at the mall.

I’ll write more about the experience when I have more photos to share, but it was a really fun day. The people at the mall were lovely.

Love, Hannah