Sole Searching

I consider myself to be a fairly reasonable person when it comes to shoes.  I like shoes, but my closet isn't overflowing with them.  I generally wear a pair of shoes until they are nearing the end of their useful life before replacing them (although even after replacing them I sometimes often hold on to them until they literally fall apart because, well, that one skirt just looks better with my old brown flats than my new ones!).  I'm willing to pay for quality shoes, but I refuse to spend exorbitant amounts of money on footwear.

Until now.  Now, I'm about ready to pay anything for a pair of brown sandals.  Because, apparently, I am absolutely, completely, unreasonably high maintenance when it comes to brown sandals.

My last pair of brown sandals lasted me for almost six years.  I should have replaced them last summer, but I just didn't want to deal with it.  This summer I have no choice—part of the sole has fallen off one of them, and I just don't think duct tape can fix it this time.  So about five weeks ago I started my search for new brown sandals.  I wasn't feeling too picky—just something not too expensive, dressy, fairly comfy, and little to no heel.  Easy peasy, right?

Ha.

Five weeks, countless hours of hunting, 9+ stores, and sanity-I-didn't-have-to-spare later, still no sandals.  After the first round of hitting the stores I expanded my search parameters to: less than $100, somewhat dressy, won't kill my feet if I wear them for an hour, and a heel no higher than two inches.  Thinking that now I was being open-minded enough that surely I could find something, I headed out for round two of the hunt.  I probably could have found something along those lines, but apparently the final straw was that I wanted brown sandals—not beige, not red-brown, but just plain ol’ dirt brown sandals.  Apparently I have absolutely no sense of style whatsoever, because these sandals simply do not exist. 

I did see one pair that looked quite promising, but I wouldn’t even let myself try them on after looking at the price tag.  Please tell me it is reasonable to not want to pay more than $100 (or even that much!) for sandals.  Am I completely out of my mind?

All of this would be frustrating but not disastrous, except for the fact that I’m headed to Lincoln for a friend’s wedding tomorrow and—you guessed it—my dress is brown.  It’s supposed to be in the 80s, and I don’t want to wear my flats.  So time is running out.  What’s a girl to do?  Do I subject myself to one more vexing round of fruitless searching?  Do I settle for something I’m going to absolutely hate by the end of the summer?  Do I go ahead and pay $100+ for the perfect pair (maybe—they probably won’t even fit right) and not let myself buy a new pair of sandals for the next 10 years (and at that price they had darn well better last that long!)?  Do I go barefoot at the wedding, because everyone’s supposed to be looking at the bride and not her personal attendant anyway?

Heaven help me when my black sandals wear out…