Tweet
I hadn't been going to write about this little gem yesterday because it was funny, but I didn't think too much of it until I got back into work today and got the REST of the story. One or two minor details have been changed to protect the innocent. The rest is presented in whole and with snide commentary by your's truly throughout.
Part 1 - Bridezilla!
I adore that Bridezilla TV show. Nothing makes me feel more sane than watching these women fly into fits of rage over something as normal as paper plates. But, after having watched this show for a couple of years, I've apparently developed the ability to pick one of these women out at 100 paces. Getting ahead of myself, though, first there's a technical explanation to get to.
Technical stuff ON
We do free wedding announcements here at the paper. With pictures. Be amazed, almost everyone else is. Usually, we get pictures of the couple and in order to fit them both, we have to crop the picture fairly long. But sometimes, we just get a picture of the bride herself, in which case we usually just do a shoulders-and-up shot. We don't change this for our free method, because if we do ONE little change here, someone else will want us to do ONE little change there, etc., and that way lies madness.
Downstairs in our paid advertising department, meanwhile, they'll frame a 4-inch picture of your white satin-clad butt if you fork over the cash for it. And when you're dropping five thousand bucks on flowers, spending about $65 or $100 to get your newspaper announcement just right is usually the highlight of your discerning bride's experience.
Technical stuff OFF
Anyway, the elevator door opens, and an underfed, overtanned, flip-flop and denim microskirt wearing vision of averageness wanders off. She wasn't ugly by any means, but she wasn't Trish Stratus either. However, I have to think she'd have looked ten times better if she didn't already have that twitchy-eyed, been-crash-dieting-for-a-month-to-fit-in-the-dress look of homicidal fury but trying to hide it with this smile of intense pain plastered on her face.
I see she's clutching a form and a photo and automatically my mind screams "ONE OF THEM!"
She walks up to me and says, sure enough, "Hi, I need some help with my wedding announcement."
I immediately rubberneck my way around and gesture to "S", the clerk sitting behind me and thank God, the one of us who actually specializes in weddings. "She can help you." /throwing under the bus
Bridezilla walks around to S, while I whip out my jar of lemon-lime tequila salt (non-alcoholic, it's just flavored salt, basically) and sit back to enjoy the show. "Hi, I need some help with my wedding announcement," Bridezilla repeats.
"Okay, what do you need?" S asked, blissfully unaware.
Bridezilla hands over the form and a picture of her in her full wedding regalia, and glancing at the picture, I see I was correct in my assumption that the woman is much prettier when she doesn't have the look of a barely-restrained slavering coke hound. "I had a question about the picture..." Bridezilla says, and starts shifting and tilting her head in a method I instantly recognize. Hell's bells, she's trying to look "cute". We're getting into DEFCON 3 levels here.
"Okay, what was your question?" S asks, looking at the picture.
"See, I know for the free ones, ya'll just do like, the head shot...buuuuuut..."
(DEFCON 2! DEFCON 2!)
"...I was really wanting my bouquet in the picture too...so I need to get it cropped so that you can see it..."
I look at the picture again. She's holding her bouquet down in front of her stomach, a good three inches away from her face in the picture. Maybe if they'd been at her chest, we could have finagled something, but not with them down there. Fuuuuuck. I'm glad I sold out S to deal with this.
"Ummm..." S is quiet for a minute, having finally realized the danger and trying to figure out some way out of this, while I quickly turn to my computer and pretend like I'm working on something to avoid being asked. "Okay, well, for the free ones, we don't really do full-body shots, it's just head shots, so we really wouldn't be able to get the bouquet in there."
"Oh, but I REEEEEALLY wanted my bouquet in the picture..." Bridezilla shifts her weight a couple more times and starts twirling her hair and actually POUTING. Holy shit.
"Yes, ma'am, but we can't do that in the free ones. We have to keep them all the same for free and we can only do headshots."
I know I'm not the only one who sees Bridezilla start to lose what shred of cool she has at this point. "But I've seen pictures in the paper where they had the bride in there and it was from the waist up."
At this point, S's and my boss, RM, speaks up. "Yes, ma'am, but those are either paid announcements so they can dictate how the photo is done, or it's a free photo of the couple and we have to crop a little lower to fit both of them in. For free photos of just the bride, we only do headshots."
(I must take the time to really point out here that bitch is complaining about something she's getting for FREE. Take it or leave it honey.)
Bridezilla is getting visibly more upset. "But I want my bouquet in the picture! I'm getting married Saturday-," (this was Thursday, holy crap, why is she doing this NOW?) "-and I'm trying to get this done and I have a million other things to do and I want my bouquet in my picture!"
RM is much calmer than I could ever be. "I'm sorry, ma'am, but we just can't do that for the free ones. If you want to talk to someone down in paid advertisement-,"
Bridezilla's lower lip noticeable quivers, and she SNATCHES her form and photo back out of S's hands, stomps her foot, and wails dramatically, "I'LL BE BACK LATER!!" Then bursts into tears, storms onto the elevator, and stands there whining and crying until the door closes.
At which point, naturally, all of us in the newsroom, caring human beings that we are, start laughing hysterically. Total length of time required for Bridezilla to be reduced to tears: approximately three minutes.
L, the downstairs secretary, calls to my desk in about two minutes, saying "Mysty, what did you DO to that girl who just left??" Oh, so just because someone walks out of the newsroom sobbing, it's automatically my fault?
We spent about the next fifteen minutes laughing and mocking the girl (and freely admitting that we are indeed bitches and going to hell for doing so), then went back to work. Then I left work at five to share the fun story with my family.
But wait, there's more....
Part 2 - The Family Strikes Back!
After I'd left, B, one of our female reporters, and E, a male photographer, left to go work on a story for the paper about some area storm damage and stuff like that. They were traveling down one of the most damaged streets, interviewing whatever random people and taking pictures.
For reference, B had been in the newsroom for the entire Bridezilla crying incident. E had not, but she had just finished telling him the story in the car on their way to the storm damage.
So, B and E get to one house, where there's an older couple cleaning up their yard, and B starts asking them questions and E gets a couple of pictures of a cemetery a little bit away. However, B and E suddenly realize that there's more to this couple than meets the eye, and there ain't no Bumblebee involved.
The older couple apparently calls out their daughter, who is, going from B's description, in her forties or so, and then all three of them proceed to tongue lash B and E about ALLLLL the problems they have with our paper. Their "problems" range from not being able to get their paper delivered (E made a note that the family didn't have one of our specialty mailboxes that all subscribers get, which meant they probably weren't even subscribers), about how the stories we choose to write about suck, about the letters to the editors being biased, our reporters are unprofessional, etc., etc. B and E are busily being deer in headlights.
Then, in case this incident has not been weird enough, the couple's daughter tosses off the coup de grâce. "And ONE of you people MADE MY DAUGHTER CRY TODAY!"
As B put it to me as she was retelling this story...NO. FREAKING. WAY. They had, by sheer dint of bad luck, randomly landed at the family home of Bridezilla herself, who were trying to clean up the storm damage for her rehearsal dinner THE NEXT DAY! And Bridezilla's mother was out for blood about her precious little snowflake getting exactly what she wanted right when she wanted it. That explains a WHOLE LOT.
Fortunately, the two of them managed to make a quick getaway before the verbal abuse could escalate and fled back to the safety of the office.
So, now we're just hoping that the family isn't provoked by the appearance of a reporter and a photographer in their yard right after their little precious drove herself into tears against the harsh wall of reality.
Just in case, I'm wearing a heavy ring today...fer hittins'.
Regardless, since she hasn't gotten her announcement in, we know we haven't heard the last of Bridezilla...
Part 1 - Bridezilla!
I adore that Bridezilla TV show. Nothing makes me feel more sane than watching these women fly into fits of rage over something as normal as paper plates. But, after having watched this show for a couple of years, I've apparently developed the ability to pick one of these women out at 100 paces. Getting ahead of myself, though, first there's a technical explanation to get to.
Technical stuff ON
We do free wedding announcements here at the paper. With pictures. Be amazed, almost everyone else is. Usually, we get pictures of the couple and in order to fit them both, we have to crop the picture fairly long. But sometimes, we just get a picture of the bride herself, in which case we usually just do a shoulders-and-up shot. We don't change this for our free method, because if we do ONE little change here, someone else will want us to do ONE little change there, etc., and that way lies madness.
Downstairs in our paid advertising department, meanwhile, they'll frame a 4-inch picture of your white satin-clad butt if you fork over the cash for it. And when you're dropping five thousand bucks on flowers, spending about $65 or $100 to get your newspaper announcement just right is usually the highlight of your discerning bride's experience.
Technical stuff OFF
Anyway, the elevator door opens, and an underfed, overtanned, flip-flop and denim microskirt wearing vision of averageness wanders off. She wasn't ugly by any means, but she wasn't Trish Stratus either. However, I have to think she'd have looked ten times better if she didn't already have that twitchy-eyed, been-crash-dieting-for-a-month-to-fit-in-the-dress look of homicidal fury but trying to hide it with this smile of intense pain plastered on her face.
I see she's clutching a form and a photo and automatically my mind screams "ONE OF THEM!"
She walks up to me and says, sure enough, "Hi, I need some help with my wedding announcement."
I immediately rubberneck my way around and gesture to "S", the clerk sitting behind me and thank God, the one of us who actually specializes in weddings. "She can help you." /throwing under the bus
Bridezilla walks around to S, while I whip out my jar of lemon-lime tequila salt (non-alcoholic, it's just flavored salt, basically) and sit back to enjoy the show. "Hi, I need some help with my wedding announcement," Bridezilla repeats.
"Okay, what do you need?" S asked, blissfully unaware.
Bridezilla hands over the form and a picture of her in her full wedding regalia, and glancing at the picture, I see I was correct in my assumption that the woman is much prettier when she doesn't have the look of a barely-restrained slavering coke hound. "I had a question about the picture..." Bridezilla says, and starts shifting and tilting her head in a method I instantly recognize. Hell's bells, she's trying to look "cute". We're getting into DEFCON 3 levels here.
"Okay, what was your question?" S asks, looking at the picture.
"See, I know for the free ones, ya'll just do like, the head shot...buuuuuut..."
(DEFCON 2! DEFCON 2!)
"...I was really wanting my bouquet in the picture too...so I need to get it cropped so that you can see it..."
I look at the picture again. She's holding her bouquet down in front of her stomach, a good three inches away from her face in the picture. Maybe if they'd been at her chest, we could have finagled something, but not with them down there. Fuuuuuck. I'm glad I sold out S to deal with this.
"Ummm..." S is quiet for a minute, having finally realized the danger and trying to figure out some way out of this, while I quickly turn to my computer and pretend like I'm working on something to avoid being asked. "Okay, well, for the free ones, we don't really do full-body shots, it's just head shots, so we really wouldn't be able to get the bouquet in there."
"Oh, but I REEEEEALLY wanted my bouquet in the picture..." Bridezilla shifts her weight a couple more times and starts twirling her hair and actually POUTING. Holy shit.
"Yes, ma'am, but we can't do that in the free ones. We have to keep them all the same for free and we can only do headshots."
I know I'm not the only one who sees Bridezilla start to lose what shred of cool she has at this point. "But I've seen pictures in the paper where they had the bride in there and it was from the waist up."
At this point, S's and my boss, RM, speaks up. "Yes, ma'am, but those are either paid announcements so they can dictate how the photo is done, or it's a free photo of the couple and we have to crop a little lower to fit both of them in. For free photos of just the bride, we only do headshots."
(I must take the time to really point out here that bitch is complaining about something she's getting for FREE. Take it or leave it honey.)
Bridezilla is getting visibly more upset. "But I want my bouquet in the picture! I'm getting married Saturday-," (this was Thursday, holy crap, why is she doing this NOW?) "-and I'm trying to get this done and I have a million other things to do and I want my bouquet in my picture!"
RM is much calmer than I could ever be. "I'm sorry, ma'am, but we just can't do that for the free ones. If you want to talk to someone down in paid advertisement-,"
Bridezilla's lower lip noticeable quivers, and she SNATCHES her form and photo back out of S's hands, stomps her foot, and wails dramatically, "I'LL BE BACK LATER!!" Then bursts into tears, storms onto the elevator, and stands there whining and crying until the door closes.
At which point, naturally, all of us in the newsroom, caring human beings that we are, start laughing hysterically. Total length of time required for Bridezilla to be reduced to tears: approximately three minutes.
L, the downstairs secretary, calls to my desk in about two minutes, saying "Mysty, what did you DO to that girl who just left??" Oh, so just because someone walks out of the newsroom sobbing, it's automatically my fault?
We spent about the next fifteen minutes laughing and mocking the girl (and freely admitting that we are indeed bitches and going to hell for doing so), then went back to work. Then I left work at five to share the fun story with my family.
But wait, there's more....
Part 2 - The Family Strikes Back!
After I'd left, B, one of our female reporters, and E, a male photographer, left to go work on a story for the paper about some area storm damage and stuff like that. They were traveling down one of the most damaged streets, interviewing whatever random people and taking pictures.
For reference, B had been in the newsroom for the entire Bridezilla crying incident. E had not, but she had just finished telling him the story in the car on their way to the storm damage.
So, B and E get to one house, where there's an older couple cleaning up their yard, and B starts asking them questions and E gets a couple of pictures of a cemetery a little bit away. However, B and E suddenly realize that there's more to this couple than meets the eye, and there ain't no Bumblebee involved.
The older couple apparently calls out their daughter, who is, going from B's description, in her forties or so, and then all three of them proceed to tongue lash B and E about ALLLLL the problems they have with our paper. Their "problems" range from not being able to get their paper delivered (E made a note that the family didn't have one of our specialty mailboxes that all subscribers get, which meant they probably weren't even subscribers), about how the stories we choose to write about suck, about the letters to the editors being biased, our reporters are unprofessional, etc., etc. B and E are busily being deer in headlights.
Then, in case this incident has not been weird enough, the couple's daughter tosses off the coup de grâce. "And ONE of you people MADE MY DAUGHTER CRY TODAY!"
As B put it to me as she was retelling this story...NO. FREAKING. WAY. They had, by sheer dint of bad luck, randomly landed at the family home of Bridezilla herself, who were trying to clean up the storm damage for her rehearsal dinner THE NEXT DAY! And Bridezilla's mother was out for blood about her precious little snowflake getting exactly what she wanted right when she wanted it. That explains a WHOLE LOT.
Fortunately, the two of them managed to make a quick getaway before the verbal abuse could escalate and fled back to the safety of the office.
So, now we're just hoping that the family isn't provoked by the appearance of a reporter and a photographer in their yard right after their little precious drove herself into tears against the harsh wall of reality.
Just in case, I'm wearing a heavy ring today...fer hittins'.
Regardless, since she hasn't gotten her announcement in, we know we haven't heard the last of Bridezilla...
What legendary lunacy!
Just remember, aiming for the face and leaving a mark is only going to make her madder on account of now her face is messed up.
Comment