A humbling experience!

On Monday, 10/22, I was given an invitation to the Moog Anniversary Celebration Dinner on Saturday, 10/27. This dinner is where they celebrate all of the 5 year, 10 year, 15 year, and 20 year celebrants, so it is a big deal. Initially, I was excited, and looked forward to going. Then, the girl who gave me the invitation informed me that the dress is "formal." With my air or boat shipment having not arrived yet, I saw this as a problem. Not only was the dress formal, but I need to wear a long gown (to my feet). Who wears long gowns in the U.S.? Apparently that's how they do that here. I really didn't know what I was going to do...Here I am the tallest female at Moog, and I knew it wouldn't be easy to find a formal dress, let alone one for my height. Turned out a couple of the girls were going to pick up their dresses that day, so they offered to help me find a dress. Let's just say this was a VERY humbling experience!

Here are some highlights:
1) At the 1st store, their initial reaction was "she's big!" The first dress I tried on wouldn't zip at all, and was about 5 inches to short. Not only were they not used to my height but apparently they weren't used to my chest size either.
2) At both the 1st and 2nd store, they were heavily pushing me to get a pink dress (we're talking pale pink). Can you see me in that? When they wouldn't stop suggesting it, I finally had to say no pink, no orange, no yellow, no green, no blue, etc. All I wanted was black, but they barely had anything other than pastel colors.
3) Finally at the 3rd store I found 2 dresses that I really liked. One red, one black. I couldn't decide so the 3 Moog girls and the dressmaker all piled into the dressing room to help me. Can you imagine 4 women critiquing you in tagalog? Oh, I almost forgot, my head hit the ceiling in the dressing room! As we were trying to decide, the dressmaker said "normally black makes you look thin, but...it doesn't for you." Needless to say I went with the red dress.

Overall, this was a very humbling experience. I'll post pictures of my dress after the celebration dinner. Hope you enjoyed that story. :)