On shopping successfully

I don’t much like shopping.

Food-shopping is bearable, clothes-shopping generally isn’t, although it is marginally better than shoe-shopping, and a whole lot better than bra-shopping.

I tend to avoid it if at all possible.

However.

Sometimes life strikes, and I get invited somewhere that calls for something other than jeans.

It seems life has struck.

I have been invited to not one but THREE weddings in the next 2 months.

I have a dress I wear to everything; graduations, parties.. everything. It’s long and dark chocolatey brown and fits and I would have worn it to all the weddings. Luckily none of them know each other, so I can get away with wearing the same outfit if I want. Except after consulting with H and A it became apparent that brown isn’t a good wedding colour. It seems ankle/floor length isn’t a good wedding-watching-dress length either.

Well that sucks.

I’m at home with my folks at the moment.

When I asked my mother for her opinion on what one wears to weddings and told her I was going to wear my brown dress, she suggested we went shopping.

The ensuing groaning noises were ignored, and I was whisked away to a rather lovely city to find something suitable.

3 hours later my brother was considerably more bored and my wallet would have been considerably lighter if I hadn’t paid with plastic.

In the past year I have been on 3 memorable shopping trips, for new things other than food. There may have been other trips, but I don’t remember them.

Each time I have surpassed all expectations and been awed by my success.

Last summer I bought 4 pairs of ‘shoes’ (= 2 pairs of going-out sandals, 1 pair of everyday sandals and 1 pair of summer shoes), last month I bought 4 bras (in just over half an hour before they kicked me out of the shop), and today I bought 4* dresses.

They are all delightful in their own way. If someone had asked me to describe the sort of thing I was looking for I wouldn’t have described any of them, but they are really really pretty and they fit and they weren’t even horrendously expensive.

Sometimes I amaze myself.

I’m going to need more invitations to dress up now.

*no idea what’s going on with all the 4s…