This is the tale of a dress, a beautiful dress, a $200 fairy princess dress marked down to $30. A warning to all those budget-minded women who think they are getting such a deal when finding a magical dress like this. BEWARE---- it can end up costing you way more than you think.

You laugh...ha, ha, but my $30 fairy princess dress bit me in the behind and took a big chunk out of my wallet. (Aaaaaaah...but it was worth it.)

Two of my very good friends and I went shopping just for fun. Evie and I went into a teenie-bopper's store to look at prom dresses. Joe, her husband, sat outside to wait while we played.

Since it was after prom season, we found the marked down dresses and started rummaging around through the racks. Evie picked out a wonderful dress and said, "Kate, I think you would look good in this one." It was a cream colored strapless dress with an organza overlay split down the middle on the long empire waist. The bodice was laced up the front with a ribbon. It looked like the kind of dress a princess might have worn back in the days of old.

I decided to try it on. After all, I was just sure it wasn't going to fit and heavens sake, if it did, the dress would only cost me $30. While I slipping it on, Evie went out to get Joe to see. When I finally squeezed into the dress, I pranced out of the dressing room to show it off. The amazed mutual gasps of, "Katie?" from both of them made me realize this dress just had to follow me home.

I called it my "fairy princess" dress. I felt so beautiful when wearing it that I decided to have my portrait taken in it. I found a photographer who looked into my soul and photographed me, the real me. He did such a wondeful job with my photographs that I ended up spending $1,500 all because of a dress that cost $30. And so, the story goes: Beware the $30 dress. It can cost you more than you think.

Because of copyright laws, I cannot show you the real photograph, but this is an outline drawing of an image of the real me as seen by this extraordinary photographer.