Tonight I'm going to Boston to stay over at my friend's future-in-laws' house, and in the morning we will be joining the chaos at the Filene's Basement annual "Running of the Brides" event. Now, I'm not one for the commodification and equation of brides with cattle, but there really are some great deals on great wedding dresses there. A couple of friend's of ours went to the event two years ago and a vicious bride stole my friend's dress right out from under her nose, put it on in a flash, and then wouldn't take it off. We're going to have to be vigilantes tomorrow. Grr. Don't mess with the Page-a-nator and her entourage! Since I have some kind of a morbid fascination with participating in this spectacle at least once, I'm very excited to be going and hopefully helping my friend Page find the dress of her dreams. `Until tomorrow!
---update---
Mayhem. The "Running of the Brides" epitomizes the word and I have never seen such craziness in my life. Wow. We got in line at 5 AM, and though we were pretty happy with our spot in line, there were quite a few ahead of us who had been waiting at the doors since 3 and 4 AM. The really early, dedicated ones had things like matching t-shirts, some with puff paint saying what size and style they were looking for, pink felt tiaras, and walkee-talkees. We were at the first entrance, and many more were at the second. When the doors opened on either side of the bridal room at 8 AM, the place was filled with the sounds of running, trampling, dress-bag-grabbing, and shrieking. Lots of shrieking. No joke, they had every dress off the racks in under two minutes. Hundreds of dresses. No time to look for what you want, you just grab as many dresses as you can possibly carry and hold on! Then you drag them over to your bride who has hopefully snagged a mirror and started stripping to her skivvies to claim it, drop the dresses and get dressing. All the dresses she doesn't want are your collateral for trading, a complex and delicate process as the trader searches the huge mess for the ones the bride likes. Two more in the entourage have jobs solely because of the if-you're-not-touching-it-it's-up-for-grabs mentality- One person must sit on the pile of dresses the bride hasn't tried on, yet, and another must hold onto the "yesses" and "maybes" as she tries on more dresses, to make sure nobody steals them. I think we were successful, despite our relatively small number, and our bride bought two dresses and is pretty sure of the one she will wear. The other should be up for sale, soon. Whew.
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