Running of the Brides

Well…we survived! Here's a recap of our day. We hit the road around 3:30 am and got in line at 6:30. The line was pretty long at that point, so I was a little nervous (and as it turns out, rightfully so).

6:30 am...the line.

While we waited, I prepped Erik on the different kinds of wedding dresses, and what we were looking for. A few minutes before 8 am the excitement was building and we were ready to start running!

Just before 8:00 a.m....proudly displaying our signage.

There was a countdown, and the crowd took off. It probably took us less than 30 seconds to reach the doors…but we were too late. They announced as we approached the doors that all 2,000 of the dresses were off the racks! See, here's the basic strategy for Running of the Brides: You bring a team of people, run to the racks, and blindly grab as many dresses as possible. Then you take your pile of dresses and start making a "trade pile" and a "try on pile." While you're trying on, your team is out trying to trade the ones you rejected (usually because it's the wrong size) and bring back more dresses for you.

We got inside, and just had no clue what to do since all of the dresses were taken. We probably spent about 10 minutes walking around, hoping someone would see our sign and our sad faces and give up a dress (they didn't). Finally, I turned to Erik, and told him we needed a game plan. We decided to split up and start begging for dresses.

I didn't have any luck, but Erik triumphantly returned with a dress! It was an ugly size 10, but it was something! When started trying to trade, we realized that it was an issue that I was looking for a size 10 and I was in possession of a size 10…basically we really needed a different size. For example, I could give someone a size 6 and they could give me the 10 I was looking for. At some point we traded for a size 4 and that's when things started going well for us! Size 4s were fairly rare (most dress samples are 10-12), so once we got our hands on one, we were able to start accumulating dresses.

Probably, for about the first hour and half we were trading…but not really getting anything good enough to try on. By 10:00 dresses were finally starting to return to the racks, and that's when I started to find some good stuff. Basically, it was useless to get there so early. We really should have just showed up at 10:00. If we really wanted to be successful when the store opened, we needed to camp out overnight, and bring a big team.

10:00 am...Finally trying on dresses! This was one of my favorites. Even though you probably can't tell, it was dirty and stained...and I wasn't confident that the stains would come out.

Around 10:00 though, we started feeling optimistic. I tried on a few dresses and I felt like we had some good options. The problem was finding a dress that I liked that was actually in decent condition. Most of the dresses were samples, so I was expecting to be a little beat up. Well some of them were in really bad shape--stained, ripped, and just plain dirty. So we spent the rest of the morning alternating between trying on, hitting the racks, and trading.

At 1:30, I was out of energy. I sent Erik out for food, while I protected my stockpile of dresses. After being there for so long, I actually had about 8 really nice dresses…so I had a lot of women (mostly mothers of the bride) trying to swoop in on them. Erik returned. We ate…and tried to keep our spirits up.

I'll summarize the afternoon by saying it sucked! We were both exhausted. And it was just overwhelming. I had a lot of nice dresses. Every one was weighing in at this point. I would try on one dress and some random woman would say that was her favorite. Then I'd try on another one, and someone else would tell me I would be crazy not to buy it. I was expecting to find ONE nice dress at Filene's. Well I found about six. And that's why the whole thing took forever. It was a really tough choice.

Finally, we started eliminating. And I started paying more attention to what I wanted, instead of what the other women were saying….and in the end…I bought a fantastic dress!

After doing some research on the interwebs, I think I saved closer to $2301. Score!

Erik went above and beyond expectations. He was more patient than I was. He didn't freak out once. He didn't say let's just leave. He didn't roll his eyes. He didn't complain. In short, he did much better than me! Over dinner that night, I asked him how he did it. How did he remain so calm the entire day? "Well" he said, "there were a lot of boobs." LOL.

You can see more pictures of this crazy event here, including a picture of a triumphant Erik.