I wish I were a seamstress

Well, maybe not. I went for my dress fitting yesterday morning. Arleen's wedding is in a little over two weeks now! It was practically a miracle that we found five of the same dress in stock at a store, in the right colour! We went for it and bought the dresses. The lady offered us a pretty good deal on the dresses. I think they were regularly about $200 and she gave them to us for $145. The only thing was that none of them were the right sizes. There were two size 12s, two size 16s and a size 20. None of us in the wedding party are nearly that big. The lady at the store assured us that she had taken a size 20 dress down to a size 6 before when a different bridesmaid had to take over at the last minute. We thought, hey that's great! We were told when we bought the dresses that alterations were not cheap. I did not expect them to be. I expected maybe $80-100 which was sort of hard to swallow at the time, but you do what you have to do for a friend. That takes me back to my fitting yesterday. It took about half an hour. She pinned and pinned and pinned. When it was done I went to pay and thought she said it would be $117. She is Vietnamese and has a pretty strong accent. When I saw the amount on the debit machine it said $170. Ack, I just about choked. It costs more to alter the dress than it did to buy it. *sigh* Weddings are a great money making industry. I am thankful that Arleen is the last of my close friends to get married. I am looking forward to the wedding though :)