Today (Wednesday, 12/29) was rather productive. I dealt with the furnace repairman (missing an appointment for it, but heat is important), stopped in at the grocery co-op, went and got a quote from a dressmaker*, cooked dinner (boil parsnips, mash with chopped parsley, drizzle with a nice olive oil; serve with hard-boiled eggs on the side), and looked up dressmakers to get competing quotes from tomorrow (Thursday, 12/30).
And then I talked on the phone with my mom, and she insisted that I check the websites of regular stores for nice non-wedding dresses, because the first price quoted to me was too high. (It's not cheap, but is well within the "reasonable for custom clothing" zone.) I did so, because due diligence with null result generally is enough to make her stop pushing a bad idea. After 30min or so of subjecting myself to the usual "people who wear your size aren't allowed to look nice; here's our selection of ugly" that clothing stores seem to specialize in, I called back and was (perhaps unnecessarily) nasty about it. I do think that I've nipped that idea in the bud. But now I need to put it away enough to fall asleep, because I'm supposed to get up in 7h.
* Standard off-the-rack wedding dresses have so far proven unusable - not due to size issues, but due to their inability to cover the long underwear necessary for an outdoor wedding. The designers don't even seem to think that people walk between their car in the parking lot and the warm indoors.