Lori Allen - Say Yes to Whats Next: How to Age with Elegance and Class While Never Losing Your Beauty and Sass!

2020 Lori Allen Enterprises, LLC

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Allen, Lori, 1959- author.

Title: Say yes to whats next : how to age with elegance and class while never losing your beauty and sass! / Lori Allen with Kay Diehl.

Description: [Nashville] : W Publishing Group, [2020] | Includes bibliographical references. | Summary: "From the star of Say Yes to the Dress: Atlanta, now filming its eleventh season for TLC, comes a book and a life-makeover movement for women approaching fifty and beyond. Move over, girlfriend, Lori Allen is here to help you say yes to whats next! Lori uses her confidence, wisdom, and signature humor not only to help young brides on their most important day ever but also to model to them and their mothers how to live out the coming years as the best of their lives"Provided by publisher.

Identifiers: LCCN 2020010587 (print) | LCCN 2020010588 (ebook) | ISBN 9780785234135 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780785234142 (ebook)

Epub Edition May 2020 9780785234142

Subjects: LCSH: Middle-aged womenHealth and hygiene. | Beauty, Personal. | Aging.

Classification: LCC RA778 .A4444 2020 (print) | LCC RA778 (ebook) | DDC 646.7/2dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020010587

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020010588

Printed in the United States of America

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My grandmothers

My whole life I have been blessed to be surrounded

by a strong circle of women.

These women sewed their childrens clothing

late into the night during the Depression

and encouraged their children to go to college when

that was unheard of.

I come from a long line of women who break barriers.

The generations of other strong women in my family

This bookand the cultural shift I pray it inspires

is dedicated to the other women who came before me,

who stand beside me today, and who will come after me.

Jennie Ruth Baird, Lillis Harrison Burns,

Jean Baird Burns, Lucille Ryder Allen,

Mollie Allen Surratt, Becca Gunn Allen,

Caroline Jean Surratt, and Charlotte Jo Surratt.

My daughter, Mollie

Thank you, Mollie, for walking this journey with me.

From our first phone call about the idea for the book

until the hour we turned in the final manuscript, we did this together.

You have helped me pen my legacy, and its been beyond special.

You

I wrote this book for you and for the millions of other women

who deserve their Whats Next to be full of life, joy, and adventure.

Contents

Each time a woman stands up for herself, without knowing it possibly, without claiming it, she stands up for all women.

MAYA ANGELOU

I was in Dallas for a big gala celebration, seated beside a very attractive woman who was about my age. Fashionably dressed, Texas-sized big hair, blonde. She was kinda quiet all through dinner, but I kept trying to chitchat with heryall know how I like to talk.

I told her about my store, Bridals by Lori, and about filming Say Yes to the Dress: Atlanta in the salon. I pointed across the table at Eddie, my husband. I bragged on my daughter, Mollie, and her husband, Jason, and my granddaughters, and about my son, Cory, his wife, Becca, and their newborn baby boy. She nodded as I was talking, but I could tell she wasnt really paying that much attention. That changed the minute I started telling her that I was writing this book about making the most of our remaining years. She suddenly came to life, explaining that her children were grown and that shed been feeling adrift. She confessed that she didnt have a clear direction for going forward with her life, but she knew she didnt want to just put her feet up and wait for the sunset.

A plate of fancy cookies sat on the table in front of us, and I grabbed one. The way I see it, life is a cookie, I told her, and although nothing on this earth is promised, I still have about a quarter of my cookie left. Its sitting in the palm of my hand, and I intend to savor it all the way down to the crumbs. I want to go out full, having enjoyed every bite. I want my book to empower other women to do that as well.

As we stood up to leave the dinner, she grabbed me by both impeccably manicured hands and locked eyes with me. Speak for me, she said earnestly. Speak for me.

Her plea was so intense that it gave me a cold chill. In that moment, I felt a lot of weight on my shoulders, a duty to speak not just for her but for millions of women like us. I still do.

Who are we? We are women about to turn the page. We are no longer young, but we are not yet old. The soundtrack of our lives includes Faith Hill, Lionel Richie, David Bowie, and Whitney Houston. Our children are grown, flown, and on their own. Although we may still be plagued by hot flashes, we no longer have to buy Tampaxwe can wear white pants without fear.

And there are a lot of us. We are a tribe that is forty million strongemphasis on strongbut youd never know it from how we are presented in the media.

Which is to say that we are not presented at all.

Its as if all of us went down with the Titanicthe movie. That film came out over twenty years ago, when we still were perceived as relevant. We are the women who have hidden away the vintage photos of our younger selves coiffed in poodle perms, shags, wedges, stick-straight hair parted down the middle, and bangs that fought with our eyelashes. We survived not just bad hair days but bad hair decadesnot that anyone notices anymore. As far as popular culture is concerned, we died with our hairdos.

Weve become invisible, which is a marketing mystery since women our age have control over more than half of all discretionary income in the United States and 75 percent of our nations wealth. Despite being the healthiest, wealthiest, most accomplished generation of women in history, not much out thereunless its CoQ10 or dental implantsis created with us in mind.