Why You Should Never Try on Your Wedding Dress 14 Years Later

My in-laws are visiting from California this week. As usual, they brought small gifts for the kids. They also brought something special for me. It came wrapped in a plastic trash bag.

"I cleaned out my closets a few weeks back and found it," my mother-in-law told me.

Inside the bag was my wedding dress.

"I have to try this thing on," I told my husband. I was so excited I could barely stand it.

He advised against my plan for several reasons, all of which centered around the unlikely possibility that the dress might not fit like it used to.

"Of course it's going to fit," I told him. Just to be sure, I waited until after 11pm to try it on, the time of the day when good judgment and perspective on what's really important in life are at their peak.

I don't know what happened to my upper body over the past decade and a half, but my shoulder blades appear to have sprouted into wings. My rib cage has also spread at least three inches.

"It's because you've had babies," my husband said matter-of-factly. "Your body changes."

"I didn't give birth out of my rib cage!" I snapped.

After that, my husband didn't make any more comments about the effects of pregnancy on the female body.

I spent the next ten minutes preparing to send my Spanx into battle.

The supportive undergarment was unsuccessful at getting me into the dress but successful at encouraging me to look up pictures of Victorian corsets on the Internet.

"You are overreacting," my husband told me. By now it was 11:45pm and he was trying to sleep.

To prove him wrong, that night I slept in the constrictive shape wear (super duper comfortable) and didn't eat anything for breakfast the next morning.

Still nothing. Evidently rib cages cannot be put on diets.