Tag Archives: Awkward situation

I wore the same dress as a senior citizen to a wedding

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Other than bridesmaids or on-duty uniformed employees, no one wants to show up to an event in the same dress as another woman.

I am not sure why this is ‘a thing’. Shouldn’t it just be confirmation of your excellent taste? But it is embarrassing.

I had a really great dress. It was a rare splurge that was totally worth it and I always felt like a million bucks in that dress. I wore it to work and parties and pretty much anywhere I could. I loved it.

The dress and I were attending our friends’ wedding. I was standing around with my future husband admiring the pretty outdoor setting of the ceremony, waiting for it to start, when I saw a familiar pattern across the garden.

“Hey!” I said to Michael. “A lady at another wedding is wearing my dress.”

I moved closer to get a better look (not sure why but it was like when you see your hometown in a movie or on TV and you get all excited).

“She’s at this wedding,” Michael corrected me when he saw the woman. “That’s the aunt.”

I was suddenly less excited to see the dress.


The Toad / Foter / CC BY-NC

For a second I considered running home to change, but the wedding was starting in minutes and there was no way I could make it.

The dress was not subtle. It had huge polka dots in pink, black, red and white. I know it sounds ugly but it was a really nice dress.

It looked great on the aunt too.

Our eyes met and we smiled and made a little joke about how we could step in if there was a bridesmaid emergency.

I don’t embarrass easily but I admit, I felt a little awkward. I was thirty-four years old and wearing the same dress as a senior.

That is when another woman showed up in the dress. Hers was a different colour combination (brown, beige, orange) but otherwise identical.

My older twin (aka The Aunt) looked shocked. “That’s my step daughter!”

“You should’ve had this one covered,” I told The Aunt who nodded.

The step daughter looked seriously annoyed. She came over to us and said, “Hello” but in a pouty way that put my feelings of embarrassment into perspective – I did not want to turn all snitty like Evil Step Daughter as I immediately named her in my mind.

The only dress anyone is interested is the one on the bride, I reminded myself. No one will notice! And besides, who cares? 

I was wrong about people not noticing – they did and there were lots of comments and little friendly jokes. But I was right that no one cared except for Evil Step Daughter who accessorized her brown polka dot dress with a pained expression for most of the celebration.

It was a beautiful wedding. The couple were clearly madly in love and the bride looked gorgeous.

The Aunt and I danced like fools together for much of the night and had a great time in our pretty polka dot dresses.

 

Random but possibly valuable advice for avoiding an embarrassing moment at work

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Odds are, if you are going to walk around with red furry handcuffs and a vibrator in your purse, someone is going to find out.

mag3737 / Foter / CC BY-NC-SA

It will most likely be your boss.  I know because it happened to me.

It was a long time ago, thank goodness, but the memory is one of those ones that stay fresh like the day it happened.

It was the day of my summer work party. A group event away from the office that would start with a pep talk from a few executives (and some deadly boring Power Points as it turned out) followed by cocktails, snacks and a major league baseball game.

I hadn’t been to a lot of corporate ‘parties’ so even though attendance was mandatory (never a promising sign I’ve since learned), I was looking forward to a night out!

I was the property manager of a small shopping centre in one of the ritziest areas in town. I had one last meeting before it was time to head down to the stadium for the party. The meeting was with a restaurant tenant.

My tenant and I were discussing something surprisingly contentious, like why the restaurant can not use passenger elevators for transporting garbage (property management is a strange business and you need to worry about all sorts of things you normally wouldn’t think of like the total foulness and wear and tear of garbage on elevators etc). The owner’s son, who ran a catering and events off-shoot of the restaurant, came into the meeting room.

“Hey Christine,” said the son, totally not caring that he was interrupting. He handed me a buzzing envelope. “You’re invited to the Naughty Girl wine launch.”

Huh?

I opened the envelope, and emptied it onto the table. It was a vibrator. It was shaking all over the table.  An invitation was attached to it with furry read handcuffs.
Father and son thought this was hilarious! They could barely contain themselves.

I had no idea how to react but tried for cool indifference, fumbling to turn the thing off. It was ricocheting off the table and making an unbelievable racket.

It was incredibly awkward!

“Seriously though,” said the son when he had stopped giggling. “What do you think? These are our invitations for Naughty Girl Wine. We’ve sent them to all the media.” He was quite proud.

“Wow.” I answered shaking my head, still wrestling the jittery sex toy to find the ‘off’ switch.

I finally succeeded and the buzzing stopped.

I could feel that my face was bright red but I was still aiming for ‘unruffled’ to show my tenants how cool and in control I was.

I looked at my phone and saw that it was time to end the meeting. I had to get to the summer party! Excellent timing. I needed to get out of there!

I threw the ‘invitation’ in my purse and headed back to my office to meet up with my team.

We made it to the Dome just in time and lined up to show our tickets so we could get to the private box that had been rented for the party.

Everyone was there, my boss and his boss were right behind me. The receptionist from my office was immediately beside me. I don’t remember who was ahead of me but as I watched them go through, I realized that my bag would be checked and remembered about the “invitation”.

I dangled the bag low, close to the ground and held the ticket out with my other hand, hoping to slip through unchecked.

“Miss.” the bag checking security lady called gently. Then, “MISS! I NEED TO CHECK YOUR BAG.” Her tone was a little menacing and it was clear that I was going to have to let her search my bag OR ELSE. Everyone sort of stirred and drew closer to find out what was causing the commotion.

And that was it. There it was for all to see. My boss. My receptionist. Everyone.

The one and only time that I have walked around with anything like the ‘invitation’ in my purse was also the one day that my bag would be publicly searched in front of my boss.

What are the odds?