While I was on an unvoluntary blog strike, I decided to try out a spray-on tan from a tan shop. Tan-A-Rama, in fact. I love the name.
Because of my extreme paranoia of skin cancer, you’d never catch me dead in a tanning booth. Or alive. But the idea of a perfect golden spray-on tan for my wedding — one that wouldn’t damage my skin — was attractive.
Here’s the catch with the spray on tan… Someone has to spray it on you. And it can ruin any clothes that you wear, so in essence, a complete stranger sprays your entire body while you’re completely and utterly NAKED.
Yes, this was a bit strange, but having experience with massages at a few spas, it wasn’t completely new to me.
Luckily, the girl that applied my tan was very chatty and made me as comfortable as I could be as she sprayed everything. Yes, everything, people. I was tan in places that people don’t normally get tanned.
So after you get sprayed down, you have to stand in front of a fan (still naked) for 10 minutes. It gets pretty boring standing in a booth in front of a fan, so I ended up singing and dancing to myself. I managed to keep myself mildly entertained.
After I dried off, I put on my clothes (I had brought some clothes I didn’t mind ruining if the tanner wore off on them), and drove home.
When JB saw me, he said, ‘You got some sun today!’ And I, of course, just started giggling. I eventually fessed up that it was a fake tan that I was trying for the wedding, and the man thought I had completely fallen off my rocker.
In fact, my face was getting so tan that I decided to go inside and wash it, which thankfully took off the majority of the tan on my face.
The thing they don’t tell you about the fake tan is that it rubs off. You should see my poor pillow case. It turned orange. I stained the sheets, and even JB’s clothing fell victem.
And all I could think was that I’ll be damned if I’ll wear a white dress while I have fake tanner that could leave orange stains all over it.
I had circles of pale on the top of my feet where my tennis shoes tied. The insides of my elbows were REALLY tan. And though I liked how my arms, chest, and shoulders looked, it really didn’t look like me.
I’m the girl that was told by one of my brother’s friends at age 12 that I’d never find a boyfriend because I was so pale.
I’m the girl that bathes in 45 SPF before venturing out into the sun — summer or winter. I’m not the girl that has a tan.
OK, I used to be tan during my days as a lifeguard, but that tan was a result of hours in the sun wearing 45 SPF.
So, I decided that I’m going eau natural for the wedding. You may not be able to tell where my pale skin stops and the white fabric of my dress starts, but I’ll look like ME. Not a South Beach version of me.
Thankfully, I discovered this about a month before the wedding, instead of a few days before the big day!
