Prom Time

Today, Alison and I went shopping for a Prom dress. She is a senior this year, so the dress had to be special. Alison has always been somewhat conservative in her attire, but when I picked her up this morning she surprised me saying she wanted something that was a "princess" style dress. I had researched places to go on the internet, and we decided to hit a consignment store in Atlanta first. When we got out of the car at the store, the first thing I noticed was that next door to the consignment store was a cookie shop called "Ali's Cookies." Well, if that wasn't a sign of some kind (Ali is one of Alison's nicknames)! I jokingly remarked that it must mean something, and we entered the store. Alison picked out several dresses to try on, and when she came out in the most "princess" of all, she was very excited. It was purple (although it looks brilliant blue in the pic) with turquoise and silver "sparkles" on it. I know it sounds horrendous, but it was really beautiful and fit her very nicely. According to the store owner it had never been worn. Alison really loved the dress, but I convinced her we needed to look a couple of other places before making a decision. I should have saved my breathe and my gas. We drove to a large mall about 10 miles away and looked at two large stores with many dresses, none of which were nearly as pretty. In addition, they were much more expensive. We called the original store and asked the owner to hold "THE dress" for us until we could have lunch. I was craving sushi, so we went to a combination Japanese/Thai restaurant. I satisfied my sushi craving, and Alison had a Thai noodle bowl with both of us using chopsticks for the meal, bringing back memories of "Wagamama's" on our trip to London. When we arrived back at the original dress shop, I looked up and saw that there was a restaurant, two shops down, of the same name and chain as the one in which we had eaten lunch. How ironic! We should have just bought the dress, had our lunch there, and saved the gas it took to drive around. Maybe we could have even gotten an "Ali's cookie" to finish off our meal. It's always such a relief to find the "perfect" dress for an occasion, and we both believed that this dress is the perfect one for Alison's senior prom.