Flotsam

Believe it or not, I have a few big, weighty posts to write. Important posts. Thoughtful posts.
This is not one of them.
No, this is a post about a dress–my wedding dress, which I bought Monday night for an amount of money that I am trying to avoid thinking about, because thinking about it will cause me to break out in guilty welts all over my body. My guilt was assuaged somewhat by what I found when I searched for “average price wedding dress,” namely a wedding message board populated with women who spent thousands of dollars on their dresses. These women are mostly much further from their wedding date than I am, and all seemed to have tickers shrieking that there are only “11 months, 6 days until I marry my Soul Mate!” After I wiped the vomit from my chin I realized that a question I had pondered for years had just been answered. I have always wondered what the babydust-spewing women on trying-to-conceive message boards did with their time before they decided to procreate, and now I know.

The dress I bought is not the one I saw on Saturday. I went back to the bridal shop Monday night to purchase the Saturday dress. That was the only purpose of my visit. However, once I was there, I couldn’t help but think When will I have another chance to try on all of these ridiculous garments? And so I tried on about ten dresses, including one that had not been there on Saturday, that I saw on the mannequin and thought to myself That is a beautiful dress and it will make me look wide as a barn. Only it didn’t, and now I will be wearing it at my wedding.
When I first arrived, the woman who would be helping me stumble in and out of all that satin asked what I was looking for in a dress.
“Well, I want to be able to get around in it,” I said.
“You’re looking for something with a shorter train then?”
Oh, how I laughed at her wry commentary on the excesses of the bridal industry! Only she was serious.

I did try on one or two dresses with trains. And another with an honest to god corset built into the bodice that seemed to be made out of a boa constrictor. I had no intention of buying any of the be-girdled train-having dresses, but I did have a delightful time swishing around in them. One of them I was especially fond of, and as I told my mother, it would have been my first choice if I were having a Royal wedding.

The key to trying on wedding dresses, for those of you who haven’t done it yet, is the Shimmy. You shimmy as you pull the dress over your hips, and you shimmy right out of the skirt when you are done. The Shimmy prevents the fabric from tearing, and also it keeps things festive.

The dress I bought reduced me to a giggling, teary-eyed creature almost as soon as I put it on. My rational self would have slapped my giggling self and told it to stop being an embarrassment, except my rational self was busy breathily singing a few bars of “Happy Birthday Mr. President” after noticing that this particular dress made me look like Marilyn Monroe. Now, I am much, much lumpier than Marilyn Monroe in real life, but this dress, god help me, it works miracles. The clever gathering at the waist obscures the Pilsbury-esque portions of my midsection. It is a perfect wedding dress—elegant enough to feel worthy of the day, but not out of character for me. Also, I can breathe and wear it at the same time.
My mother took a few pictures, and handed me the digital camera. I do not photograph well, and I hate pictures of myself so much that it has inspired family arguments when I refused to be photographed. But in this dress I looked beautiful, and if you know me, you know that I have never typed that sentence before. And it wasn’t even the right size—it was a size too big, and was held up in the back with what looked suspiciously like the clips from a set of jumper cables. Before the clipping I could have fit two sleeping kittens in the bodice with me, and I am far from flat-chested.
I ordered the dress in ivory, in the correct size, and it will be here in four months, by which time I could probably have made it myself, blindfolded, sewing each bead and sequin by hand. But apparently four months is a normal amount of time for dress-delivery in the world of weddings. After it is delivered I will have the dress meticulously fitted to my (hopefully-taller-and-thinner-by-then) frame.

As she was rehanging the gowns I rejected, the store owner asked what I was planning in the way of accessories.
“Ak-sess-or-ees?” I asked, as if I had never heard the word before.
So I tried on a veil, which made me look like a nun. A slutty nun, when paired with the dress, but a nun nonetheless. The poor woman then tried to sell me a tiara, but what I wanted, I explained, was something kicky and fifties-ish—something glamorous but not somber.
“Really,” said the woman, a glint in her eye. “I’ll be right back…”
As it happens, she not only runs the shop and does all the alterations, but also makes vintage-inspired veils and hats. I ended up with a pouf of netting that slides into the back of my hair with a comb, a tangle of fishnet-y ivory and pale satin flowers that is so perfect I have to restrain myself from crushing it in my arms and squealing in a pitch only audible to dogs and teenaged girls. I may be as excited about this fetching $50 headpiece as the dress itself. It is at my mother’s house, being hidden from my cats, whom I suspect would feel as passionately about it as I do. I will post a picture this weekend.

Now, if you need to take a break from all this girlish squee-ing to retch into your cupped hands I will understand, really I will.

Editor’s Note: There seems to be some confusion. I did post a picture–Monday night, after I bought the dress. Remember?