Christmas parties are a part of the holidays… we usually attend a few of them each year… and I usually go through my closet looking for something to wear… occasionally I will splurge on a new outfit… but never have I been invited to a party where you are encouraged to wear something ugly.. not only that where there will be some kind of contest for the ugliest sweater…

Once we realized we would be able to go to the party… I thought in the back of my mind… I’ll just wear some nice dress pants and a blouse… then I ran into someone who is going… she said she was so excited to hear that Matt and I would be able to make it… I leaned in and mumbled… “Do we really have to wear and ugly sweater?”  I expected her to say… “Naaaah, don’t worry about it…”  she said, “Well, yes… I think they have a contest…”

I started thinking about the fact that my wardrobe does not have a lot of sweaters… I have dressy clothes and super casual clothes… not a whole lot of “in-between” attire… I recently bought a couple of sweaters.. but because I like them.. not because they are horrendous… being that I am competitive at everything I do… I set out tonight on dinner break to find the ugliest top I could find… and I got really tacky knee high socks with fuzzy balls on them to wear with it…

I narrowed it down to two of the tackiest tops I could find and socks that had coordinating colors… I just could not decide which one was worse… so I asked a sales associate which one she thought was the ugliest… she did a double take and said in a perplexed voice.. “The ugliest?”

I said, “Yep… I have been invited to an ugly sweater party.. which is worse?”

With a little chuckle she said, “Well… this one is bad colors… but these colors are really bad!” 

I said thank you so much for making my decision easy… and now wonder if that clerk got a kick out of someone actually wanting an honest opinion about how awful something looked… as opposed to being forced to smile and tell someone how great they look…

I am now looking forward to seeing all of the other crazy ugly outfits…