When I walked in, I was shocked to see them all sitting on the slinky black leather couches Sebastiano has all over his studio, sipping mimosas.

“Surprise, bitch!” Lana said as my jaw dropped.

I was already having a bad day, but I wasn’t expecting things to go quite as badly as this.

“Wow,” I said, giving my mom a hug. “I’m so happy to see you guys . . . I guess. Are you drinking already?”

“Duh,” Lana said. “Didn’t you know you can’t try on wedding gowns sober?”

“I did not know that,” I said.

“It isn’t true,” Shameeka assured me.

“Don’t make her drink if she doesn’t want to, Lana,” my mom said in an icy tone. My mom has never been able to forget Lana’s mean-girl past.

“Yeah, I think I’ll pass,” I said, remembering that later I was going to have to make important decisions with Madame Dupris regarding the Qalifi refugees.

“Don’t be a twunt,” said Trisha, and handed me a champagne flute.

“I beg your pardon?”

“A twunt,” Trisha said cheerfully. “That’s a cross between a—”

“A lot of people don’t know the secret to a really good mimosa,” Lana interrupted. “It’s not just orange juice and champagne. You gotta put triple sec in there, too, to really bring out the flavor of the juice. I added vodka, too, for kick.”

She said this right after I’d taken a sip.

“Princessa!” Sebastiano hurried over to raise one of my hands and air-kiss it. “You are here at last! You don’t know how long I’ve been waiting for this day, all so that you can walk down the aisle in one of my gowns, like the princess bride you were born to be. I have so many designs for you to try. Almost ready, all of them, they just need for you to say sì and then I will put on the fin touch. So we try now, yes? What do you like best, the mer? Or the ball?”

Sebastiano’s grasp of English has always been tenuous, even though he’s had studios in both New York and Europe for some time. He prefers to say only the first syllable of multisyllabic words, so that mermaid (as in, mermaid skirts) becomes mer or ball gown becomes ball.

“I don’t know, Seb,” I said to him. “To be honest, I don’t really care.”

“Don’t care?” Grandmère looked like she’d been hitting the mimosa (or screwdriver) bar pretty hard herself, especially since she’d brought Rommel along and he was running around loose, humping the legs of all the couches and anyone who’d stand still long enough to let him.

“Mia,” Tina said, sounding anxious. “You have to choose. It really matters.”

“Yeah.” Trisha looked appalled. “Don’t wear a sheath, like I did, that’s too tight. Then you can’t sit down, even in double Spanx. And trust me, it blows not to be able to sit down on your wedding day. Getting married is really tiring. There are so many people you have to snub by not smiling at them.”

Grandmère tipped her glass in Trisha’s direction in a silent little toast of approval.

“Mia will look great in whatever she wears,” Shameeka said generously. “It doesn’t matter.”

“But since she’s a princess, wouldn’t a princess ball gown be most appropriate?” Tina asked.

“But that’s what everyone’s expecting,” Ling Su said worriedly.

“Sebastiano, what do you think looks best?” Shameeka asked. “I’m thinking modified A-line.”

I had no idea what anyone was talking about, and I had, upon occasion, watched those bridal shows on TLC on Friday night, on the rare occasions I hadn’t had a function to attend and Michael hadn’t been over to demand that we change the channel.

“Of course, of course,” Sebastiano said, steering me toward the dressing room. “I have it all. You sit here, princessa.” He stuck me on this little couch in a room far away from everyone. “I bring you dresses. My assistant CoCo will help you change.”

Then he ran out, and ever since CoCo has been coming back here at regular intervals with gigantic garment bags containing half-finished one-of-a-kind Sebastiano creations which she’s been helping me try on, and in which I then parade out into the studio to model for Sebastiano, my mother, Grandmère, Rolanda, Dominique, Tina, and the rest of the girls to comment on.

Truthfully, they’re lovely dresses. And everyone seems to like all of them. I have the most supportive friends and family (and bodyguard) in the whole world (except for Grandmère, who said the mermaid gown made me look “like that woman who likes to show her backside, what is her name? Oh, yes, the Kardashian”).

But none of them have made me catch my breath and cry, like women do on that one show when they know they’ve “found the gown.”

Maybe that only happens on TV? A lot of stuff, I’ve noticed, gets manipulated by writers when it’s shown on television—even so-called reality television—and makes us think we’re supposed to think and act and look certain ways, when the true reality is totally the opposite. Often there’s no “right way” to look or think or act, but because we’ve been so conditioned by the media to think so, we actually mistrust our own better judgment.

Like Sebastiano, who just took me aside and asked worriedly if “Every all right?” He left out the word thing.

“Yes, I think everything’s all right,” I said to him. “I’m sorry, Sebastiano, all your gowns are beautiful. I just can’t pick one.”