I get an email just as I’m heading down the grimy stairs into the subway. A publicist named Vivian Presley-Jones says she’s reaching out on behalf of Adora, a wedding gown designer, to offer a complimentary gown for my big day if I promise to tag the brand on Instagram. These kinds of emails used to shock me; now, while I still feel lucky, the surprise factor has worn off. I look up Adora’s designs. They’re not entirely my taste—everything is sexy, sheer, plunging, encrusted in crystals, like something Kylie Jenner would’ve worn to prom if she had bothered to go to prom—but it’s the style I see popping up all over Instagram. People seem to like that, even if I don’t. I don’t let myself second-guess this decision. I can’t lose my nerve anymore. I write back immediately to say thank you, yes, and ask if I can visit the atelier on Monday.

I’ve seen enough episodes of Say Yes to the Dress to know how this works: you chant “sweetheart neckline” three times into a mirror while holding a champagne flute and wearing a white silk robe, and Pnina Tornai appears to swath you in tulle. I asked Sophie and Carmen to join me at the atelier to pick out my wedding dress. (That’s still so weird to say. My wedding dress.) I’m the first to arrive at the salon, which is decorated in soothing tones of gray and cream that make the two racks of bright white gowns stand out. Soft pop music filters through the sound system. Of course, a sales assistant named Marcy pushes a champagne flute into my hand immediately and encourages me to wait on a Mongolian lamb bench. Vivian, the publicist I had been emailing with, makes small talk with me: she coos over my engagement ring and asks to hear all about how I met my fiancé.

I hesitate. I can make up a story that doesn’t involve revealing an identity, can’t I?

“Believe it or not, we met at a bar,” I say, exhaling heavily.

“No way, which one?” she asks.

“Dorrian’s? On the Upper East Side?” I feel like I’m taking a test I’ve barely studied for.

“No way,” she repeats. “I’m there all the time, no fair. So sweet.”

Before Vivian can ask too many more questions, my sister arrives in the most quintessentially Sophie way possible, bearing a spiral-bound notebook and a fistful of colorful highlighters to take notes on our favorites. Carmen slinks in a minute later with a gray cashmere hoodie pulled up over her hair and dark, bug-eyed sunglasses that cover her from brows to cheekbones. When she gets closer, I gasp. Her face is covered in bright red blotches and peeling in an eerily reptilian way. Sophie politely declines a champagne flute while Carmen lunges desperately for hers.