Before

Tomorrow is our ward Trunk-or-Treat.  Honestly, I'd rather stay home.  Our ward is super large, and we have a million kids.  It's really a night of chaos, and you're lucky to get to sit and eat your dinner of chili and hot dogs.  But there's no keeping Mauri from it.  I think it's the highlight of her year.

So we've been diligently working on her Corpse Bride get-up.  We stopped by the local Goodwill.  I really didn't think we were going to find what we needed.  I mean, how many times have you gone into a thrift store looking for a specific thing and found it?  Those kinds of stores are good for slow, methodical, leisurely browsing, with nothing in particular in mind.  Like panning for gold.  Sifting through all the junk and crap hoping to find a glimmer of something fabulous.  I've found a treasure or two in my day, but most days, there's just crap.

Immediately upon entering the store, we spotted a wedding dress hanging on one of those movable racks.  If you frequent thrift stores, you would know that those movable racks mean NEW STUFF.  Maybe even stuff fresh from the trunk of someone's car.  The likelihood of gold increases when you get the first look.  Mar and I checked out the dress.  Hmmmm.  Size 10.  $24.  That dress would take a darn lot of altering (who has time?), and still cost more than I would like.  But it's an option.  We continued our search.

We walked over to the rack of "finer dresses," and spotted another off-whitish/yellowish long satin dress with a lace bodice.  Size 14.  $10.  I liked it better than the first, so I took it off the rack to hold on to.  We quickly strolled through the housewares aisles (I had to make sure I wasn't missing something good), then looped around by the kids clothes.  I was glancing.  Not really searching or hunting.  We didn't have much time, after all, and I had a dress that had potential in my hands.

Then Mauri spotted it.  A white dress.  A girls size 10.  $14.  It was almost too good to be true.  We grabbed it, ran the other dress back to the rack from which it came, and made our purchase.

Mauri wanted to get some "before" pictures.  We would have to make some changes to that lovely white dress if she was going to be the Corpse Bride, you know.  I told her to grab the veil that she already had, gifted to her by her Grandma G. a year or two earlier.  It would be perfect with her costume.  

She stalled.

"But I don't want to use that veil," she said.  "Can't you just make me one?"

The thought of running to another store, looking for tulle, and trying to make a veil was daunting.  We still needed to work on the dress, and figure out how on earth we were going to do her skeleton arm and leg.

"Let's just use the one you have," I coaxed.  "It's torn anyway, and the comb is broken.  It would be perfect.  I'll find or make you another veil for dress-up later."

Mauri made a call to Grandma G., just to make sure she wouldn't mind.  Once she had Grandma's approval, we moved forward with our plan.

So here's the before:

It would be so much easier if she would just settle for being a bride.

She was still hesitant about using her beloved veil for her costume.

Then we took that beautiful white dress and veil and put them in here:

My fingers are crossed that the results will be satisfactory.  I'm still trying to figure out the skeleton arm (without having to purchase an entire skeleton costume too), and my break is over (so sad), so my time is limited even more.

"After" pictures coming soon.