My mom had emailed me two recommended shops to get custom-made Chinese dresses for me and my bridesmaids, one shop in Temple City (which happens to be the shop Vicky had used for her wedding attire) and one in Chinatown. Since Vicky and I were familiar with the Temple City shop already, we thought we’d start with the one in Chinatown and do a price comparison. That was yesterday (Sunday).

I entered the street address my mom emailed me into my navigation system, and the two of us were off. We chatted in the car through a very long drive (45 miles), and then suddenly, Vicky observed, “Are you sure your nav is correct? Cuz we’re nowhere near Chinatown. We’re going into Santa Monica.” I didn’t know anything cuz I’m a navigational idiot, but Vicky pulled out her portable navigation system from her bag, input some addresses and researched, and discovered we were 15 miles out of our way past Chinatown. Turns out the street I was supposed to input was “North Broadway” and I was only told “Broadway,” so the nav was taking us to an entirely different location. I was pissed, I hate driving in circles for nothing, especially when it takes me 30 miles out of my way round-trip, but Vicky calmly and cheerfully told me to just get off the freeway and find a place near UCLA (which is where we were near) to have a nice lunch. It suddenly dawned on me that Killer Shrimp may be nearby. I input the restaurant into my nav, found we were less than 4 miles away, and we ended up having a great lunch (Vicky’s first time there).

After lunch, we input the correct address and drove into Chinatown. It went severely downhill from there. I felt like I’d driven into a third world country. Asian people were milling about the streets oblivious to cars; the streets were dirty with trash, mysterious liquid, and pigeons; there was no parking; street vendors were yelling and peddling wares and birds and crap. We stumbled through crowds of people onto a small pay-parking lot that was at least fenced off with a live person overlooking the lot; I had little doubt that if I’d parked my Lexus in the streets, I’d come back to a stripped car. Having parked and paid, we made our way through the dirty, rude, shoving people and crowded street vendors to the address I was given, which turns out to be NOT A SHOP, but a huge building with many more swapmeet-like booths and vendors inside, just like in China. Unlike China vendors, however, these shopowners are ghetto and rude. Vicky would ask every vendor displaying Chinese dresses, in Mandarin, whether they custom-make dresses or whether they simply sell premade dresses, and they treated us very scornfully, scoffing at us when they’d answer. The only vendor who said he did sell custom-made orders wouldn’t stop loudly smacking on rice he was eating out of a large metal bowl while talking to us, and when Vicky inquired as to whether he had fabric samples, he just pointed to the dresses already hanging on the wall and told her to see the fabric for herself, and when she asked if they had other designs, he treated her like an idiot and gestured again to the few dresses he had hanging up. I told her in more than one shop in a small voice that I was ready to leave. I wanted to crawl into a dirty corner amongst the cockroaches and half-gnawed cow bones and rock back and forth until I woke up in the U.S. again.

Oh, one redeeming thing happened in Chinatown. Amongst all these rude vendors (we were told later that they look down on us cuz we don’t speak Vietnamese or Cantonese), we did happen upon an undergarments shop. That vendor was very nice and helpful, spoke English, and Vicky thought to ask her whether she carried strapless bustiers that went underneath white bridal gowns. She did indeed, and let me try some on. I found a seamless one that fit perfectly! I didn’t like the one that David’s Bridal tried to sell me along with my wedding dress purchase because that one was lined with foam (like the stuff in a padded bra) and they wanted $90 for it plus tax. Vicky had purchased nearly an identical one from Victoria’s Secret in the neighborhood of $80 for her wedding gown. This bustier in Chinatown, Vicky bargained with the vendor and we walked out with it for $28 cash, no tax. *high-five Vicky* It hadn’t even occurred to me to ask for bustiers in this place; I’m glad Vicky was on top of it. She even spotted me $18 cuz I only had $10 in cash. Oh, and the vendor called me “skinny.” Whoa…sale!

We skidaddled out of Chinatown half an hour after we got there and went to the Temple City shop. It was SO NICE to park in a normal parking lot and not fear that I was gonna run over some hunched over Asian grandma in a straw rice paddy hat carrying a stick on her back attached to a cloth bundle of bok choy and live chickens who expected traffic to stop for her. I decided that even if this store costs more, it was worth it to not have to go back to Chinatown for measurements/fit/pickup of dresses. The irony is that weeks before, I’d thought Temple City was chaos hell so the gods of fate saw fit to send me to true chaos hell so I’d know the difference, apparently. We sat in a respectable shop specializing in Chinese dresses, flipped through volumes and volumes of beautiful colorful fabric samples, got to try on many different cuts of dresses, and because the shopowner remembered Vicky, got a fairly significant discount on the dresses as well. Oh, and this shopowner called me “skinny”, too! *faint*

Vicky and I were productive; we selected my dress, her dress, the fabrics, and requested customized changes to the designs, and the store opened a portfolio for my wedding party. College roommie Diana flew down from San Jose this afternoon for a job thing, so she and I will hook up tonight and go back to the Temple City shop and let her try on/pick out her dress design. My third bridesmaid, childhood friend Sandy, is going on her own to the shop on Friday when she expects she’d have permission to work from home.

Wedding preparation is still going very smoothly and quite a bit ahead of schedule, and for the clothing aspect of it all, I really have Vicky to thank.