In June I’ll be attending the wedding of our Serbian cousin (she of the skinny legs) and if I’ve learned anything in my marriage, it is this: when Serb chicks attend a formal event of any kind, they bring their A-game. Since having kids, I struggle for a D-game at best. My sad little black dress that I dust off every Christmas was not going to cut it at this shindig, so I grabbed my three-year-old daughter and hit the mall.

I knew it couldn’t be worse than bathing suit shopping, but I still prepared for battle: makeup was slapped on, glasses were ditched for contact lenses, and—most importantly—a skirt was worn, under which was a sturdy foundation garment (because nobody looks good in a dress with Tevas, bed head and back fat).

My only blunder was not shaving my legs—they haven’t seen a razor since Mexico—but thankfully my contact lenses have a weaker prescription than my glasses so I hardly noticed.

I walked into a fairly swanky store (i.e. one that doesn’t sell yoga pants, aka the kind of store I never shop in). I grabbed a few black dresses and one taupe number that was the exact shade of my bathroom walls. On my way to the dressing room, I spotted a red confection that was full of shimmer, ruching and sexy.

Normally I wouldn’t consider wearing such a dress to a Vegas nightclub, let alone the holy union of two souls. But a Serbian wedding is not your average nuptials: it has the vast quantities of food found at an Italian wedding; the crazy drinking and dancing seen at a Greek wedding; and the bling of the royal wedding.

I decided to give the red dress a shot, suspecting that even if I could cram myself into it, I’d end up resembling a blushing weeble:

A glimpse inside my imagination. I know-terrifying, right?

In fact, the results were quite the opposite:

Okay, maybe not quite like this, but as close as I’ll ever get.

Although my three-year-old daughter loved it (“Mommy! You look like a fairy!”), I worried that it was too provocative. I phoned the Serb from the dressing room to see if he could shed light on the sartorial protocol of his people. It was, as expected, a complete waste of time.

I decided to call the bride’s sister, K, but couldn’t get a hold of her. In desperation I phoned K’s husband (at work!) only to find him, quite rightly, perplexed by my call. We decided that I would buy the dress, take a picture of me wearing it at home, email it to him and K, and they would give the final verdict.

When I tried it on for the Serb that night, he did a fantastic Roger Rabbit impression and the dress was deemed a keeper. The cousins saw a picture and declared it absolutely appropriate. Even my 88-year-old grandma proclaimed that I looked “totally hot.”

But the absolute clincher for me came from my seven-year-old son. He looked me over and said, “It’s pretty nice mommy, but your boobs look kinda chubby.”