but not a real green dress, that’s cruel

Friday, I will return to the location where I disrobed my MasterChef Canada green dress, never to wear it again.  So I thought it was as good a time as any to tell you more about it.  

When I was invited to Toronto, I was asked to think about my “Signature Style”.  Anyone who knows me in real life knows I do not have a style, other than yoga pants from Costco and sweatshirts from Disney World.  So this was difficult.  After my dull outfit choice at my Calgary audition, I knew that I needed something colourful and although pink is probably the colour that I would prefer, I decided to try and represent Saskatchewan.  And there is no better colour to do that, than green.  Rider Green.  I only have one shirt in that colour, and that is reserved for the one time a year I may attend a Rider game so I was wondering if a dress could even be found in it.  Apparently, it can.  

And then I had a completely genius idea…Hillberg & Berk Sparkle Ball earrings!  Of course!  Everyone in Saskatchewan would know exactly what those earrings were, and who I was representing.  So, I bought a few pairs to match whatever I may have to wear on the show.  I still wear them every day…with my yoga pants and Mickey shirts.  I love my Hillberg & Berk, but I hate the green dress, for many reasons:

For any of you who move on to do reality TV, pay attention to this paragraph.  If you wear a dress (as opposed to a skirt and blouse), it is much harder for the sound technicians to put on your microphone battery pack, which goes on a belt around your waist.  Translation: to put on your battery pack, your dress has to go up over your head so the sound guys can access that area! And in my case, this occurred every day, in a parking lot outside a warehouse in Mississauga, Ontario, surrounded by dozens of people.  If that is not enough, during a long day of shooting, the battery pack is changed every few hours so they do not lose audio during a cook or interview, etc.  In summary: dress over head, several times a day, middle of a parking lot.

What you likely don’t realize is even though on television it appears that everything happens in one day, it does not.  And therefore, we had to wear the same thing multiple days in a row.  To top that off, we were told NOT to wash our clothes in the hotel laundry room because if a machine were to wreck a garment, we would have big continuity problems.  That made sense to me, but after a couple of days, you kind of get to wondering what you smell like.  My genius roommate, Debra, ran out at one point and bought a bottle of Febreze so every night we would spray our outfits, and I think we managed pretty well.  After we taped all the top 50 auditions, I assumed we were done with those outfits, but when we were told to put them on again the next day of shooting, I couldn’t take it any more and decided to hand wash the dress in the hotel room sink.  That had to be safe, right?  It took all of about 5 seconds for the water to turn Rider Green and I knew a pale green dress would not be what wardrobe would want to see the next day, so that dress got pulled out of the sink very, very quickly.

I mentioned that I am returning to the place where I took it off for the final time so here is one last secret for you.  While shooting, if there is a chance you will be eliminated on that day, you pack your bags and all your luggage goes to set.  So, if you are eliminated, you go directly to the airport.  There is no going back to the hotel to change.  And so, when I was eliminated from the “competition”, I was sent to the airport in that green dress.  Anticipating this, I had packed a change of clothes in my carry-on bag and as soon as I got checked in at the airport, I went directly to the bathroom to change.  I would have hated to look crazy going through security after all.  I’m sure my television makeup was suspicious enough.  I don't know why I didn't just leave it in the bathroom garbage actually.  I had full intentions to burn it when I got home, but it does hang in a closet in the basement because I thought the day may come again that someone would want to see it.  Certainly not me…but maybe one of the children.