SYTTD: S4, E1 – “Overbooked”

Original Air Date: 09/11/2009

We’ve made it to season four of Say Yes To The Dress!!! The salon is in hectic chaos due to overbooking their brides on a hilariously outdated computer. Nothing has changed except for Audrey’s hair (yet again)

Audrey is definitely Trying Some Stuff with this look. First she went brunette and now we’re doing some kind of a wave/lipstick combo. Okay girl!

Audrey is working with former Miss Virginia, Bre Gant, who is getting married in six months.

Bre is here with her wedding-coordinator-slash-maid-of-honor Jen, her stylist Barrett, and her mom. She has a traditional groom and is getting married in a traditional venue, so she’s looking for a traditional dress.

She’s got a $4,000 budget, which is a good thing since (again) her wedding is in six months. Bre has looked at photos of thousands of dresses and tried on over eighty, but hasn’t found anything that evokes any sort of emotion in her.

Randy explains that pageant girls have a spectacularly hard time trying to buy a bridal gown, since they’ve already worn hundreds of evening gowns and are looking for something different and/or more spectacular than any other dress they’ve ever worn.

Audrey dutifully pulls some traditional-ish dresses for Bre to try on.

Bre does not like any of these (rightfully so.) The first one is too fussy, she feels absolutely nothing about the second dress, and the third one made me say “good LORD” out loud to my room so I’m glad she didn’t like it either.

The entourage is getting desperate. They do not want to keep going to bridal appointments. Barrett spies a dress and pulls it for Bre.

Unfortunately, this dress is $9,600, which is over twice Bre’s budget. However, Audrey decides to pull a taupe sample dress that’s marked down to $6999 to see if that gets a reaction out of Bre.

Would you believe it, she loves it. At first, she’s worried that it looks too pageant-y. Audrey reminds her that she was trying other dresses that were more traditionally bridal… but those didn’t feel like her. Also, the workmanship on this dress is amazing. It was originally $17,000 and you can really, really tell. She says yes to the dress!!

Next, we’ve got Keasha, also sporting a new hairstyle.

Keasha is paired with 25 year old bride Jennifer, who has brought her mom Beth, her twin sister Melanie, her fiancé’s two sisters, and her future mother-in-law. Quite an entourage here.

Jennifer has a $4,000 and a very specific vision: she wants a mermaid dress. She has brought an entire binder full of photos of mermaid dresses to show Keasha.

She also reveals that her sister, Melanie, did not want to come to this appointment and had to be coerced by their mother into coming. Red flag, right here. This bitch is going to be a problem.

I hate this phrase because it’s misogynistic but… this girl… she’s got crazy eyes. Oh my. Oh no.

Okay, so Keasha starts Jennifer off in a mermaid gown and the appointment quickly spirals out of control. Melanie tells her that her tan lines are hideous, and that she hates the shape of the dress and the skirt looks like fish scales.

The second dress is literally Melanie’s pick and she still doesn’t like!! Jennifer loves it, but this appointment is being controlled by every single person except for Jennifer.

Jennifer barely makes it to the pedestal when Melanie says, “I don’t like the shape, I don’t like the boob hole, I don’t like any of it.” DAMN.

Before Jennifer gets a chance to come out in the last dress – also extremely discouraged from the nonstop shit-parade that Melanie has been laying on her, with absolutely no help from any other member of her entourage – her sister intercepts her in the dressing room.

Melanie basically tells her to wrap it up. I am going to quote her, because it’s horrendous, “Everyone needs to get somewhere, including me. We were here hours more than we were supposed to.”

GOOD LORD. Nicole tells us that when this happens it completely ruins the fantasy of the experience. NO SHIT. Knowing the sale is lost, Keasha puts Jennifer in the last dress anyways. She – once again – doesn’t even make it all the way out before Melanie says, “I don’t like it, it looks like a muffin top. It makes you look big.”

The rage I felt at this entire interaction. I know in my bones that Melanie is the younger twin. Why didn’t anyone else tell her to shut the hell up!! Why did the mom not do anything but egg her on!!! I hope Jennifer’s fiancé is a lovely person who helps her set firmer boundaries with her terrible fantasy. I hope she comes back and leaves Melanie at home.

OKAY. I got that out of my system. I am no longer blinded by rage and I can type again.

Finally, we have our alterations bride, Susan, who previously appeared on season three, episode fifteen. She is back for her first fitting, and when she puts on the dress we get hit with OMINOUS MUSIC.

You see that line across her hip? It’s making her think that this dress was a mistake. Everything is ruined. Cancel the wedding.

Susan makes an emergency call on her phone – it’s an iPhone, very chic for 2009 – and Randy appears as if by magic to call her down.

Randy talks her down and convinces her that everything will be fine. Of course, when Susan comes back for her final fitting, everything is perfect.

My Queen Vera can do no wrong. The line is gone and the wedding is back on. This dress? It’s fine and it’s aged better than some other stuff on this show.

Final Score:

• Entourage of 5+ people: +3 points
• Nightmare Bridesmaid: +4 points
• Bride has a “bridal moment”: +5 for Bre
• Bride needs a dress in under 6 months: +5 points
• Bride starts with a very specific vision and picks something completely different: +8 points
• Manager Intervention: +5 points
• The entourage body-shames the bride: +5 points
• Bride has appeared on the show before: +10 points
• Bride goes $1,000+ over her budget: +7 points

Total: 47/100

Bye beautiful!! We’re in season FOUR now!