Dress Shopping, Screws, and Beowulf

In early December, I went shopping with five of my six bridesmaids (one lives kind of far away) and Mom for bridesmaids dresses.  I was expecting just a fun, carefree shopping trip, but boy can dress shopping be stressful.  I had NO idea what I wanted the girls to wear except that the dresses should be dark purple.  The salesgirl wanted to know if I wanted long or short?  I don't know.  Does it matter?  Satin?  Chiffon?  Something else?  I have no idea what chiffon is.  I also don't know what empire waist, organza, A Line, etc. mean.  Actually, I think I know what A Line means, I think I have dresses like that.  And the only reason I know taffeta is because my wedding dress has taffeta in it.  How do people know all of this stuff?  I mean I do go clothes shopping.  There were periods in my life when I REALLY liked to shop.  But I simply tried clothes on and if I liked them, they didn't make me look fat, and I could afford them I bought them and if not, no thanks.  But I never paid attention to stuff like the aforementioned things.  It's not like the tag says this is an empire waist dress.  Maybe I need to read fashion magazines.  I'd like to think it's not because I'm stupid--maybe I am, but I did go to college and grad school and I got good grades in both places.  It's kind of like Saturday when my fiancé's dad came over to fix my kitchen heater.  He needed a certain type of screw so I found some, but none of them would work not just because of their size (I was like ooh this is the size you need) but because that one is for sheet rock, that one is for metal, that one is for--you get the point, at least I hope you do because I forget what the others were for, but I didn't have one for drywall.  How does he know this?  Why don't I know any of these things?  They should make you take classes about clothing, construction, home ownership stuff, affording weddings, etc. in college.  Those would be a lot more useful than that class I took on pre-1800 literature (No offense intended, but let's face it, I can't remember a thing I read about Beowulf--I don't even think I spelled it correctly, but I will tell you, I did not enjoy discussing that book at 8am on Tuesdays and Thursdays).    Oh, and for the record, we did eventually find dresses (that same day) that everyone agreed would be okay.  I don't know if they love them, but none of them complained and I don't think anyone wanted to deal with me and dress shopping again since I was on the borderline of having a dress induced breakdown.  Sadly, the dress didn't come in the shade of purple I wanted, but I learned a new word, lapis.  It's apparently a shade of purple.