You know you've been in Utah too long when...

Utah is known for things like ugly wedding dresses, three month long courtships, and producing more teenage brides than any other state in the union. When I was at BYU, I lost a roommate each semester to the perils of matrimony. My house had a constant stream of bridal magazines and tulle gracing our living room. Men probably don't know or understand this, but all women I know love bridal magazines. Most of us would never own them if we're not engaged because that would be crazy....buuuuttt if one of our friends is getting married, we are more than welcome to spend hours pouring over these magazines to help our "friend." We help select flowers, a wedding dress, colors, and most importantly we help pick out a bridesmaids dress that will accommodate everyone and won't make us all look like pregnant 12 year olds from the 80s.

One of my sister's friends is getting married and so we took it upon ourselves to not only peruse the magazines but head out in search of bridesmaids dresses. I'd like to pretend that I've got a lot of things going on, but if you've read my blog on finding a couch, you've already got a good idea of my activity level since moving here. I've got two and a half weeks till my new job starts, so really, I've got nothing better to do than pick out bridesmaid dresses.

We went to one of the shops and quickly realized that everything was made of taffeta and only came in fruit colors. Fruit colors are awful colors like melon, lime, pomegranate, and strawberry, colors that no one over the age of 11 would be caught dead in. What they lacked in bridesmaid dresses they made up for in actual bridal gowns. We decided to check out the selection and went through the racks selecting our favorites. The saleswoman somehow got the idea that we were brides and started taking our selections back to the fitting rooms. We got embarrassed and so we decided to just run with it. Laura was having a December wedding and mine was next June. When asked for specifics, Laura narrowed her date down to December 21st, which when we looked at a calendar later we realized it is a Monday. Woops. It was way too much fun. Trying on wedding dresses is like playing pretty, pretty, princess for adults. I even had a nosy mother from another fitting room snap a picture of us posing like they do in the magazines. You all know the pose I'm taking about, the one where the girls look like they've successfully combined scoliosis and anexoria into a hunched over, hands on hips pose.

Yes, I know...I've officially been in Utah too long when I'm trying on wedding dresses. In case you can't read it, I typed loser over our faces.

I also love this picture from a bridal magazine. It looks like someone just stomped this poor bride's bouquet.