Last year, on Valentine's Day, I learned a hard lesson about humanity.
People suck, people are mean, and people want to take advantage of you.
Not since junior high school had I experienced such a harsh reminder.
To celebrate Cupid's day of overpriced prix fixe dinners and low self-esteem wallowing, I decided to surprise my then-boyfriend, now fiancé, with tickets to the Lakers/Clippers game. Unfortunately the game was sold out, so I turned to Craigslist and Stub Hub in search of cheap second hand tickets.
When I found a pair that seemed too good to be true, I should've known they were too good to be true. Just off the backboard, on the second tier, for $400 bucks, these seemed like a godsend. $400 isn't chump change but, for LA basketball tickets, it was on the inexpensive side. I met the girl who was selling the tickets, who fed me a whole story about how she had to go to Vegas for the weekend and she wished me well as she whisked my cash away, never to be heard from again.
My fiancé was wary from the jump. "How do we know the tickets are real?" he asked skittishly as we made our way toward the klieg lights of Staples Center.
I'd brought a friend, a ticket broker, along for the exchange, I assured him. She'd verified them. It was all good, I insisted as we walked up to the turnstiles, only to have security turn us away for fake tickets inches from the arena.
Burn!
On the bright side, that was probably the moment I realized I had to marry this guy, as he hugged me, told me it didn't matter and insisted we have a fun Valentine's Day anyway. On the flip side, it robbed me of my belief in the good in people.
Today, my trust is being tested again.
I spent today driving to a bridal shop an hour and a half away, where I found two pretty but not memorable dresses.
Standing on the pedestal, the saleswoman said, "Just know, your wedding dress is in this room. Rivini who?"
Rivini is the designer of my unicorn gown. The moment she said is, my heart fell out of my chest. These dresses were fine but the Rivini is The One That Got Away. I drove home trying to convince myself that either of these dresses would be just as good as the Rivini.
And then I found it, y'all. I found my unicorn dress! I found my unicorn for just under half the retail price on PreOwnedWeddingDresses.com!
It's being sold by a store in Australia where it's only been used on the mannequin and has a tiny one inch hole (which is nothing compared to what I'll probably do to it on the dance floor on my wedding day). My heart is racing at the possibility.
Is this it? Is this my wedding dress? Is this the perfect ensem that I will be photographed in more than anything else I will ever wear in my existence? After all the searching and hunting and trying on and sucking in, is my dress Down Unda? And, if it is, can I trust these people to take my thousands of dollars and send me the real McCoy?
Finger crossed, faith in humanity teetering toward restored, I just read my credit card numbers aloud to a woman I've never met 7,932 miles away. In about a week, I'll either have my unicorn in my hands, or another sad story about how people like to rake me over the coals around Valentine's Day.
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