by Ariel Stephens

Created on: August 27, 2009   Last Updated: August 28, 2009

"Do you dye wedding gowns?" she asked me.

I looked up from my wooden, pale-pink desk. Her smug smile on her thin lips suggested I better have the right answer.

"No, we don't have the facilities to dye an entire wedding gown," I answered. "We dye shoes complementary to you if you purchases them here."

She blinked. "Well, I just thought since I'm spending so much money on a wedding gown, why you can't do that for me." She turned to her finance, who was piereced and tattooed, I'm almost positive, from head to toe. "Will you go and get the color for me?" She asked him handing him keys. He obeyed, while she turned to me and said, "We're different" as if every bride who came into our store, with a traditional wedding mindset, were absolutely no different from each other. He came back in a few minutes and handed her a clear, make-up bag with powder blue dots on it. She pointed to the color as if showing me the precise color that would make her wedding day special. When I informed her once again that we just could not accommodate her request (this time with the defiance of another employee) she said, "Ok." And headed out with the same smug, smile that greeted me not two minutes ago.

Why doesn't she just buy a blue dress?

I'd been employed at a bridal salon for almost two months and some days I feel almost as exhausted as a full time mother. I run the front desk, which most people would identify as "the easy job." I don't have to rummage through our selection of over 1,200 wedding gowns for a bride, I don't speak with them on a personal basis, and I certainly do not wish to hear the negative gabbing of a mother, complementing her daughter on "this" and "that" which makes her hips look big. However, I'm the first person customer's see when they walk through the door. The main person who answers the ringing phone while taking appointments, making orders, setting up our bridal customers with consultants or just answering questions like, "Is it more appropriate to take a shoulder bag or a handbag to a wedding?" And I'm the one who gets slammed with everything-the complaining of stress, the bitchy maid of honor who demands the color of the bridesmaids dresses, the crabby mother/future mother-in-law/grandmother who's angrily scribbling out a nine-hundred dollar check because the bride didn't select the dress they wanted her too, or the bride who's getting married in three weeks, waited at another store for two hours for her appointment, and then bursts into our store yelling

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