My Experience with Abby's Closet

NOTE: this is my own personal experience with my own thoughts and mindset. And I just want to share so if other people have similar experiences they know they are not alone.

I will cut to the chase, it wasn't good. First if you don't know what Abby's closet is, it is a place to get a free prom dress. You wait in line, go through the dresses and find one. This was my second year going. Since last year, was a year ago, I am not going to go into detail about that one so I am true to my words. This year I woke up before 5 am and drove for an hour, than got on the max. We arrived around 6:45. We walked in and got our number and sat down for about 2 hours. We were number 492. When we finally got called we waited in the next section where they talked to us and such. At this point in that morning I was ecstatic, I was excited and ready. From where I was sitting i could only see the first few racks, they had announced they had over 7,000 dresses. I saw multiple rows of each number set. Like three rows that said "0-2". Note that when I say row i mean two about 12 feet racks (if that makes any sense, I didn't really resume them). When I finally got my chance to get into the racks I walked to the very back. They had a single row named "20+". My heart had kind of dropped. Out of so many dresses they really had only that row? I am a plus size girl but I wasn't the largest. I am a size 20. All the disappointment of only a few dresses to even look through was painful, I feel extremely bad for the larger lady's. So at that point I was upset, I do remember last year there was also one row, but also just one rack. The dress I got last year I didn't wear to prom. Just like this year they weren't really prom dresses in my opinion. They had told us they also had bride dresses and such. But on that entire row, I didn't see a single dress that you would think of when you think of prom. When I eventually found a few to try on the "dressing rooms" where terribly packed. They don't time people but they give people 30 minutes. Though its quite difficult to keep track of time when they do not allow phones. I ended up spending about an hour inside that area. I tried some on, went back and tried a few more. I did find one that I was okay with. Before we entered they mentioned how this year they had tailors that would to a little to the dress. I wanted to add straps, I went over there and they fitted some and gave it to a lady. Now two notes, they are volunteers, and I was on a time crunch. So I just had simple black straps, she ended up taking 2 hours because she cut it wrong and had to go get another one, and she was sowing by hand. At this point we had been in this general area for 3 hours, I had gotten no sleep the night before, there was so much disappointment, and they had tons of volunteers but very few were willing/would help. I know there were things that they didn't do, like how I was hungry. But the combination of everything caused me to have a bad experience. I got a dress, yes, but I am not entirely sure the experience was worth it. I hope this can maybe help people in any way. My one thing that I would say I learned is that plus size needs to be recognized. No everyone is a size 0. I am happy those beautiful girls got dresses. I hope everyone has a lovely prom.