I have been working
in bridal wear for 22 years now, and over the years have met some real
characters.
I often come home
from work and have a story to tell my husband and family, and they have been
telling me to write them down and share them, so I thought this blog the ideal
place to do so.
My first little shop
I opened was at the top of the High Street in Hastings Old Town, and within
days of opening I soon realised that this was a melting pot for all the
towns eccentric, colourful and artistic characters.
During my first week
of opening a steady stream of people popped in to say hello, including an
elderly lady with crazy hair and a rather large shopping bag over her
arm. I noticed she seemed to be talking to the shopping bag, and when I
asked if I could help her she said " Oh no thank you, I will come back
next week " and promptly left.
I remember thinking
that was a little odd but thought no more of it. Sure enough exactly a
week later she came back with the same large shopping bag, but this time a
noticed a large toy lions head peeping out of the top of the bag. I said
hello and asked her how she was, she replied that she was fine and was
there for her 12 O'Clock appointment with her lion Claude to try on
some tiaras.
I thought to myself ,
oh god not now please I have a bride due in 30 minutes, but thought it best to
let her lion try on some and hope that they would soon be done and away. I
obligingly took her over to the glass cabinet where the tiaras were kept, and
asked which one the lion would like to try. ‘The big sparkly one’ she said, ‘he
loves sparkly things’ so I took out the biggest sparkliest crystal tiara
I had and placed it on his head thinking to myself as I did so that’s
this was all rather surreal, and that perhaps one of my practical
joke loving friends had put her up to it. However, she seemed quite
genuine, if a little bonkers, so we moved off towards the mirror where she
placed him on a chair in the fitting room and then spent the next five
minutes telling him how fabulous and handsome he looked, and what a very lucky
lion he was, and that he was to be a good boy and say thank you to the nice
lady for letting him try on the sparkly tiara, which he duly did and I found
myself telling him that it was a pleasure and shaking his paw.
At the time this all
seemed pretty normal, although I had the feeling all along that Jeremy Beadle
was going to jump out at any moment. I guess this was my initiation into
the crazy,wacky world of bridal wear. More stories to follow
