Say Yes To The Dress

My friend's daughter is getting married in a few weeks. On a remote island beach, with just immediate family surrounding her and her One True Love. Her mother did similarly, on my birthday quite a few years back, with her Second One True Love. I remember that her dress was pink. Lovely.

And now it is her daughter's turn. A lovely girl with lovely plans and what I am sure will be a lovely dress, once she gets the stylist under control.

The first fitting is wonderful.  The fit is fabulous. It flatters her form. Marvelous in every way, but it touches the ground. Not a big deal if you are only zipping down the aisle of a church on a runner with maybe only a few rose petals to besmirch its loveliness. But this is a beach wedding. Stylist Can Not Imagine dragging the lovely, costly dress across the sand.

But Bride chose a gown, not a cocktail dress, so she understood that there would be LENGTH involved.
And Bride understands that sand can be dirty and sticky and might have a twig or a shell or a dead thing in it that God Forbid might get caught up in her crinolines and spend the rest of the day with her. This will not be her very first trip to the beach. She has thought about a few drawbacks and is willing to live with them.

But Stylist thinks the dress will be ruined. Just ruined.

No, buddy, but you are getting the vapors over something that is really none of your business. You made your point.  If it were you, you'd do differently. But this isn't about you. This is about Bride. Who frankly, wants to strangle you with her bustier right about now.

So following a conversation that took on the pitch and quality of a hissy fit, Stylist huffed off without scoring an expensive hemming assignment for Seamstress, and Bride took to Facebook to see if she was completely nuts.

She described the disagreement, and mentioned that she knows the dress could endure some less than delicate treatment, but it is HER dress and HER wedding, and hello, the dress is intended to be worn only once. And asked if her FB Friends agreed.

I commented from experience. My wedding dress hangs in my cedar closet (I have refrained from selling it at a yard sale for a dollar) with obvious Black Sambuca stains on the front of the hem. I told Bride to ask her mother, who had been one of my bridesmaids, to explain it to her, and told her that I have never cared about the stains. They are part of the dress's story.

I believe everything has a story.  There are memories, good and bad, clinging to everything in our lives. I think for some people more so than for others (hence the existence of Pack Rats, and the ability to have reality shows like Hoarders.) But there are things in my home that I can not part with because of the memories attached to them. Like mothers save baby shoes and Christening gowns. The memories are alive within the things.

My wedding dress represents my marriage, and the story of my getting to the altar. My wedding to Lars was called off once. By me. Six months before the date. (Oh, had I only held that thought just a wee bit longer!) And in my sadness, following my tearful goodbye, I cancelled caterers and bands, and informed bridesmaids, and took the dress to be preserved. God only knew how long it would be dormant. What if I'd become a spinster and had never worn it at all? What if I'd found a shiny new man and wanted a shiny new dress with no icky memories hanging on it with all the other embellishments?  But eventually, I had joyfully undone the package and put it on, with a gorgeous headpiece that I saved and fashioned into a veil for Hil's First Holy Communion. The story has several chapters, evidently.

And I have a dress that I was wearing when I'd gotten some very, very bad news. Scary news. News that began one of the most intensely serious and troubling times of my life as a parent. It was a festive dress, but one I'd worn to work, as it was suitable for the office, but looked pretty enough for the office Holiday party. I'd been on the phone with Scott when I'd found it.  We had not even had our first date. When I'd questioned whether I should get it, he'd talked me into it. 

And I have not worn it since that Holiday Party. I won't part with it, but the memories it holds are so strong that I don't love wearing it.

And when Dad died, I'd gone to the mall to find funeral clothes for my young children, and an outfit to complete the collection I'd need for all of the events to come. My purchases included a lovely black suit with a gorgeous lining. My boss at the time had asked why I would not wear the magnificent black designer suit I'd gotten at 80% off at Lord & Taylor. It was indeed fabulous, and I still had time to get the jacket tailored to perfection. (We had a miracle working tailor in the building.) And I remember telling her that I did not want the first time I wore it to be to Dad's funeral. It would forever hold that memory, and I wanted it to be something I loved to wear. I wanted it to have a different story.

And I remember every article of clothing I had on the night I first went out with Scott. Each piece carefully chosen.  I think of that evening every time I see the fabulous Nicole Miller pants in the closet.

Conversely, I have yet to put on the cool pants I wore on my date with Casey. They may go in the charity pile this season. Not only do I need to unload the memory, I am sure the sensory memory of Road Kill Breath will come drifting back the moment I slip them on. No thanks.

So my advice to Bride, and to any bride, is this: wreck the dress if you have to. But live your life and have the wedding you envision and what happens to the dress while you are living your life in it becomes part of its story. 

So if Bride drags the hem across the island sand, and spills a little rum on the lace, or decides to take a dash in the surf with her newly minted spouse, or takes a spin on a bicycle build for two and gets bicycle chain grease all over the train, so be it. It is A-OK to do, if it is A-OK for her. No one else matters. The memories she makes in her dress are hers to cherish.

And years later, when she takes the dress down to show her granddaughter, and that child asks why it looks like it does, Bride will have a twinkle in her eye as she retells every last morsel of the Story of the Dress.

And that, is why we go to all the trouble in the first place.