So I went with my sister, mother, and best friend to my first appointment. The assisstant I had was very cheerful and seemed very eager to help. I'm a street size 14 so I was really nervous about finding a dress, and my fear were completely founded in reality, it turns out. I tried on 4 dresses and didn't find one.
The first dress I tried on was really disappointing from the start. I told her I wanted something modern, and she brought out a dress with long lace sleeves and it was obvious that this was the dress the started all the PS brides with. It was the quintessential "fat girl's dress." It also looked really antiquated and old-fashioned, like a lace dress from the late 80s.
The second dress was a mermaid dress with a tulle skirt and really heavy and intricate beading. I also thought this dress looked old-fashioned, and it was maybe 2 sizes too small. She tried to lace me into it and I could barely move my legs. Then my mother started with the comments, saying it made me look chunky, and that I looked like a sausage. My mother is PS too, and heavier than me, so I was a little surprised to hear it.
The third dress was a lace dress with a keyhole back, and by this point I was pretty fed up with the assisstant because she didn't understand what "modern" was and didn't seem to understand plus sizes. I couldn't get the dress over my hips, and the assisstant insisted on holding it up to me and having me "imagine how I'd look." It was humiliating.
After a bit of a clarification over what I was looking for she came back with a better style. It was a taffeta ball gown (but not princessy) with a beaded sash and I liked it on the hanger, but not so much on me. No one else liked it on me and we all agreed it made my lower half look completely enormous. The assisstant kept trying to talk me into the dress even after I said no.
Overall I'm not psychologically scarred by the experience but I'm definitely not happy. I left feeling like sh*t about myself and needed a long smoke to get over it. I don't know when I'm going to go dress shopping again but it sure as hell won't be any time soon.