This season two finale is a real descent into incredibly boring madness. It’s a bit of a clunker of an episode with a couple of incredible moments – such as the consultants getting silly and playing dress-up in the store, which culminates with a camera operator proposing to Audrey with a rock (?) of some kind. This made me laugh out loud.
Also extremely funny: my queen Vera’s look of extreme skepticism and Elise actually rolling her eyes. Your honor I love them.
Unfortunately for me there are actual brides in this episode. One of them is Kate Gosselin of Jon & Kate Plus 8 fame – which premiered a year before this episode – in a truly inspired TLC crossover event. Kate and Jon are renewing their vows in two months in Hawaii and she is allegedly excited. Kate looks like she’s being held hostage during this entire episode. I have never seen something look so dead-eyed while talking about how excited they are.
This is the most enthusiastic that she looks for the entire episode.
Kate wants something more conservative on top and something that flatters her. For reasons that I will never understand, she goes with an empire waist. The Regency Era is my least favorite period in fashion history. I think true empire doesn’t look good one anyone unless it’s incredibly heightened (such as the 2020 film Emma) but this is… not good.
Kate is a fan of Dress #3 and Elise manages to convince the designer Richard to make a few changes for her. They quickly talk her out of Dress #4 and Kate is released from Kleinfeld’s purgatory to return to her own personal hell of being married to Jon Gosselin. This entire episode caused me to go down a Wikipedia rabbit hole I would rather forget.
Our girl Liz here is paired with consultant Audrey, who is once again saddled with a bride that cannot decide what she wants. Liz likes a-line, trumpet, fit and flare, and ballgowns. She likes ruching and beading, and she’s brought her fiancé because he picks out all her clothes. Audrey notes that Liz has described a million different dresses and doesn’t seem to have a clear picture of what she’s looking for, but Audrey is rolling with the punches and starts pulling dresses for her bride.
Turns out, Liz’s family is mean as hell. Dress #1 is discarded for making her look “too hippy” and “like a bubble in the back.” References are made to J.Lo. Leave her out of this! Her fiancé describes Dress #2 as fish scales and can I just say, what is this man looking at? Has he seen a fish? Everyone hates Dress #3 and says it’s “dingy.”
Audrey pulls Elise for help, and they grab Dress #4, praying it will win over the family. Here’s the grand reaction: “yeah that’s nice.” They leave without buying anything and I would be extremely interested to see the dress that Liz ends up wearing at her wedding.
We have a nice little interlude with an alterations bride, Grace Han. She met her fiancé through his daughter, who was taking her gymnastics class. It’s a very sweet and awkward story. Grace is concerned that her conservative, Korean father will think that the dress is too low-cut, and my queen Vera is here to save the day.
One of my very favorite tropes of Say Yes To The Dress is when a bride starts absolutely losing her mind in the alterations department, and Vera shows up to work her magic and save the day. I wish Vera was my mentor.
Finally, we have Randy show up with another alterations bride, Linda Barella. We haven’t seen Randy in a while! He’s much softer and sweeter here, and you can see him evolving towards the public persona he has in much later seasons. He emphasizes that his job is to provide help and guidance to the brides.
Linda is 52, and she met her fiancé 32 years ago.
Over the years, she talks about how either he was ready to get married or she was, but they were never ready at the same time.
Evidently, they remained friends this whole time, and her life fell apart a few years ago when both of her parents got very sick and she had to take care of them. After they passed, he was there for her, and helped her put her life back together. He proposed in Paris, and here they are.
Here’s her dress! It’s fine! I find her story very cute and that’s why it’s included!
That’s a wrap on Season 2 of Say Yes To The Dress. I’m already regretting my choice to recap all these episodes but here we are!
Final Score:
- Entourage of 5+ people – +3 points
- Entourage that uniformly hates the dresses – +3 points
- Bride has a “bridal moment” – +5 points for Kate… I guess?
- Heart-wrenching story – +10 points for Linda
- Bride needs a dress in under 2 months – +7 points
- Manager Intervention – +5 points
Total Score: 33/100
