Dress Shopping

Alison's homecoming is right around the corner and it is time to go shopping for a dress.  She originally wanted to wear one of Sarah's dresses, but after trying it on and seeing it, there was no way  that was going to happen.  As much as she likes to think that she can wear Sarah's clothes, Alison is getting too big.  She is both taller and a little larger than Sarah so the dress was a little snug.  That means that we had to go look for something today. 

The problem is that a lot of schools have had their homecomings already and there isn't a whole lot of selection left.  Alison wanted to go with a simple black dress, although it also need to be stylish.  Oh, and it couldn't have lace.  Seems simple enough right?  Wrong!  We hit all the major stores and could not find anything.  Some were too short, some didn't fit right, some didn't look good on her. 

After going up and down the mall, we ended up going into a store that was just more of a lark than anything.  It was a store Sarah always used to buy clothes in, just casual stuff, though, so I wasn't actually expecting to find anything for her there.  One of the sales girls asked her what she was looking for etc., I assumed just making small talk to see if she could help with anything.  After looking thru some things and not finding anything, she checked with a co-worker and the co-worker said that they just got something in and hadn't even taken them out of the bags to display yet.  It was a little black dress that she thought was exactly what Ali was looking for.  So she gave it to Ali to try on and it was perfect.  How lucky was that?

Then of course it was time to accessorize, since they were having a two for one deal on accessories.  She got a belt, and I think a necklace, to match, and it all came to less than $100, which after seeing clothing bills for years with Sarah was a very good deal! 

The final piece to get was shoes.  Again, no easy task, but not because things were picked over, but because it had to be the right style, size, size of a heel...  Again, we tried a bunch of stores, even the big warehouse stores, and nothing.  There were some nice styles, but they didn't have Ali's size, so we had to keep looking.  She finally found something on a clearance rack at JC Penney.  It wasn't exactly what she was looking for, but they matched and they fit, so after all the searching I think it was the best we were going to do.  What a wonderful way to spend a Saturday.