Wedding Guest Outfit: Trashy Diva Honey Dress in Green

Yesterday, our two good friends Lindsay and Steven got married. It was an absolutely amazing day: the bride looked like she’d stepped straight out of Vogue (as did the groom, of course!) the venue was stunning, and it was crammed full of our friends: what more could you ask for? I love weddings. In fact, if someone else could please hurry up and get married so I can go to another one, that would be great… Of course, you’re just going to have to imagine all of that, because I like my friends and want to keep them, so I’m not going to post photos of them on t’internets. Instead, I bring you The Saga of the Trashy Diva Honey Dress, which is what I wore to the wedding… even although sinister forces were at work, trying to keep me and the dress apart. D’uh DU’H DUUUUUUU’HHHHH!

The saga of the Trashy Diva Honey dress (Look, I’m just going to call it ‘Honey’ from here, OK?) began in much the same way as the story of the mint green Zara dress: with me spotting the dress online and ruthlessly stalking it until the day I was finally able to make it mine. On that blessed day, I went to the Trashy Diva website to buy the dress, and… you’re thinking it was sold out, aren’t you? Well, it wasn’t. Nope, Honey was very much in stock, available, story should’ve ended right there.

But it didn’t.

Because right after I added it to my basket and started going through the checkout process, I found myself assailed with doubt about whether or not I was buying the right size. As the dress would be coming from the US, and would therefore cost quite a bit to send back there, I didn’t want to make an expensive mistake, so I spent a bit of time mulling it over: I measured some of my existing dresses, I measured myself… I think I had a couple of cups of coffee, too, but that’s neither here nor there. Finally, at the end of this process, I came to the conclusion that yes, the size I’d had in my basket was, indeed, the right one, so I went back to the site to buy it.

And THAT was when it sold out.

AAAARGH.That was also when I declared WAR on the Honey dress, and Terry started making plans to seek asylum in some other, less dress-centric household, rather than go through YET ANOTHER FREAKING DRESS SAGA, GOD. Poor Terry. Well, I contacted Trashy Diva, and asked if they’d be getting any more Honeys in my size. They said no, they wouldn’t, but that they might have a spare one they could sell me. I got all excited about this, emailed the address they’d given me… and was told, nope, no way, no Honeys here. Damn. But all was not lost. Well, actually, it kind of WAS, to be honest, but it was still a long time before the wedding, so I started flirting with the idea of other dresses, all the while secretly hoping that a miracle would come to pass and the Honey dress would one day be mine.

Finally, however, it got close enough to the wedding day that I knew I’d have to order SOMETHING, so with sadness in my heart, I ordered another dress. And then, two days after I placed that order? The Honey dress came back in stock. I mean, OF COURSE it did. GAH! (I had actually joked about this to Terry as I placed the order. “As soon as I do this, the Honey dress will be re-stocked,”I said. And Terry just looked at me, like, “You’re telling me this as if I ACTUALLY CARE, or can tell one of your damn green dresses from every other one, why?”)

Well, folks, I just couldn’t help myself. I couldn’t let it get away after all that time. “I’ll just send back the other dress when it arrives,” I told myself. “It’ll be like it never happened!” And then I ordered the Honey dress (A choir of angels sang at this point. It was ace.), and I sat back and waited for it to arrive. And I waited. And I waited. I waited a bit more. Hey, did I mention I WAITED? You see, it would seem that the universe wasn’t quite done messing with me yet.

As soon as I placed that order, a strange sequence of events was set in place, which saw me wait a further month to receive my dress. First of all, it went on a trip around the US. I checked the tracking code every day, and every day saw it arrive in a new city, and a new state, for a fresh stage of its adventure. At one point, it spent the weekend in Miami. Nice for it. I’d imagine that, if the dress could write, it would probably write its own blog post all about its adventures that week. “The Honey Dress Sees America!” it would be called. Or “On The Road With the Honey Dress”. Or “Haha, Amber Must Be Totally Freaking Out Right Now!” (You’re all really glad that my clothes can’t actually write, aren’t you? You should be.) Finally, the dress reached the UK.

(Terry also wore a skirt. He was an usher, so got to dress up, and pose like a catalogue man. I should probably point out here that these photos were taken the day before, when he was trying the kilt on to make sure it fit: it got ironed, and his face got shaved for the day itself…)

And this, it would seem, was the very special moment our customs officials had been waiting all their lives for, because they took that dress and they kept it all to themselves for over two weeks. I like to imagine them all taking turns dressing up in it and doing “fashion blogger” poses. I only like to imagine that, though, because it’s better than imagining the dress huddled in a corner, muttering, “Please, let me go! I don’t got no drugs! I don’t know nothin’!” while customs officers play “good cop/bad cop” and occasionally beat it. * (*Note: entirely fictional depiction of what ACTUALLY happens at customs. I expect.)

Well, as you would imagine, I eventually ran out of patience with this whole hostage situation, so I emailed Parcelforce. “What do you want from me?” I asked. “Where do you want me to leave the ransom money? Please, I just want to see my dress alive!” Given my history with Royal Fail, which Parcelforce is part of, I didn’t have high hopes of this. But I was to be proven wrong, because I sent my email to them late one evening, and at 8:30am the next day (8:30! AM!) I had a phonecall from a lovely young man who told me he would be acting as a hostage negotiator on my behalf, and would not rest until the Honey dress was safely in my hands. “Don’t you worry,” he assured me. “As God is my witness, I WILL GET YOU THIS DRESS.” (I’ve hammed up the drama on quite a bit of this post – gasp! – but, oddly, not that bit. He really was absolutely determined to get the dress to me on time. I could not be more grateful.)

(Brought together by the wonder of Photoshop. Also: spot the holes on the shoe shelves – they’d already been packed for the holiday by this point!)

And, true to his word, he did it. The dress arrived (as did the jacket, which my lovely mum had ordered for me as a surprise), and if there had been a hat in the package I would’ve been forced to eat it, in order to take back everything I have said about the Fail, I mean the Mail, because seriously, their customer service was excellent. In fact, I wonder if this was the universe’s plan all along: to delay my dress in order to bring me and the Fail closer together, repairing the burnt bridges and ending up with a stronger, better relationship because of it? (If you could just imagine a quick montage here, featuring me and a Royal Mail worker running along a beach together, and laughing over coffee, etc etc, that would be great. Or maybe a giant post box, actually. That would be even better.) Or, you know, maybe not. Maybe it’s just another story about me getting ever-so-slightly hysterical about yet another green dress. I won’t be doing that again, that’s for sure! Well, not for at least a couple of weeks, anyway…