It seems like an ignoble end to a dress choice that involved blood, sweat, tears, and the near-murder of a “bridal consultant” from Jacqueline’s Bridal Salon on Joppa Rd. (NEVER go there!)
I loved my wedding dress, but getting it was an ordeal I would never want to re-live.
Every bridal dress purchase starts with a passionate devotion to research unrivaled by any merely scientific motivation. This is a wedding dress, after all, a purchase that should express who you are on your "special day." And figuring out how to express who you are on your special day requires looking at an endless stream of photographs of models with unrealistically wraith-like bodies wearing ridiculously overpriced gowns from designers who are probably gay. A colleague called it “wedding porn,” which is probably true in the sense that it involves lust, albeit for a dress, and voyeurism.
Apparently, these days, it’s OK for a bride to wear white even if she’s not a virgin, even if she’s pregnant, and even if she doesn’t know who’s the daddy. After all, discovering who you are on your special day is all about fantasy and if I want to fantasize that I’m a virgin, even though I’ve birthed three babies, that’s my right on my special day (so get over it Mr. Stuck- in-the Dark-Ages observer who thinks that colors should actually symbolize something). Still, I just couldn’t convince the Stuck-in-the-Dark-Ages observer in my head, so I opted for ivory, which is kind of like saying, “OK, I’ll concede that I’m not a virgin, but I’m trying to do it right this time so just consider me kind of a tarnished, off-white, wannabe virgin, who is at least going for virginAL, OK?”
So after I had torn out reams of samples and sulked out of the high-end wedding store with my tail between my legs, aghast at the $4,000-plus price tags, I perused the discount rack at Jacqueline’s Bridal Salon on Joppa Rd near my house (NEVER go there!)
Trying on wedding dresses helped me to discover the power of “structure.” What I mean by structure is that, if I suddenly disappeared, it would take my clothes a while to figure out that my body was missing. The older I get, the more my body loses structure, and the more I appreciate structure in my clothing. Still, the structure was so extreme that in some wedding dresses I felt overwhelmed and constrained by the dress rather than highlighted “on my special day.”
Finally, I found an ivory-colored dress in my price range in a shape and style that I liked. But when I tried it on, the structured bra cups were clearly made for someone with ginormous gazongas, not my middle-sized ones. My modest boobs floated around in those structured bra cups like marsh mellows floating near the rim in a cup of hot cocoa.
“That’s all right,” said the bridal consultant. “We can send it for alterations.” I couldn’t see how anyone could alter a structured cup down from a size that Heidi Montag would covet down to a simple B cup, but what did I know since I usually just buy clothes off the rack, minus the rack alterations?
So I ordered the dress, paid for the bulk of it, and waited. And waited. And waited.
Personally, I think the dress arrived way before they acknowledged its arrival. My theory is that the shop likes to wait until the last minute so that you’re in a desperate time crunch and you’ll be less likely to ditch the dress if you don’t like it or it didn’t turn out.
As it turned out, even after the dress came in, they wouldn’t even let me try it on unless I paid in full ahead of time. That should have clued me in that something was fishy about Jacqueline’s Bridal Salon on Joppa Rd. (NEVER go there!) So I paid and tried it on. And it was a disaster.
Even after expensive alterations, the floating marsh mellows aspect had not improved significantly, but other parts of the dress, which fit fine before, were now too tight, even though I hadn’t gained any weight. Instead of apologizing, consoling or reassuring me, the delusional “bridal consultant” actually said, “Well, of course it’s not going to fit because your waist is bigger than your bust.”
My jaw dropped. I may not have the proportions of Marilyn Monroe, but I can absolutely assure you that my waist is not bigger than my bust. I can prove this with photographs, diagrams, doctor reports, signed affidavits, or whatever documentation you desire, but my waist is definitely not bigger than my bust, and the fact that such words actually came out of the mouth of someone with the title of “bridal consultant” left me dumbfounded. You might expect someone who was dragged in off the street to be totally delusional and tactless, but a “bridal consultant?”
I wanted to throw the dress at her. Instead, I just abandoned the dress in disgust and marched out of the store, but I ended up having to come back, my chin held as high as possible, and retrieve the dress because, otherwise, it would be like giving Jacqueline’s Bridal Salon on Joppa Rd. (NEVER go there!) money for nothing. There was no way I was going to wear that dress, but there was also no way that I was going to let them keep it.
I ended up taking it to a different tailor, paying a lot of money for a competent tailoring job, and on my wedding day, I dressed it up further with some long gloves and a pearl- topped veil I got for $25 from Goodwill that looked great after I steamed out the wrinkles. In the end, I thoroughly enjoyed my dress, I had a great time on my “special day,” and I did it without spending ridiculous sums of money.
Still, it’s just a dress. I have no daughter who would appreciate having me pass it down, (if any daughter really appreciates that) and I’ll never wear it again, so let’s just be rational and trade it in for some practical spending money, and maybe even help out someone who can’t afford the usual overpriced wedding gowns as well as sparing them a trip to ... well, you know. Call it Cash for Cloth, or Bucks for Bridal Gowns, something practical.
Still, it sort of feels like selling off a field of dreams. I mean, it may be a wedding dress but it’s still just a dress
… isn’t it?
--Jeanne Johnson
I'll always remember how beautiful you looked walking down the aisle toward me! In the end, the dress fit you perfectly and, in my opinion, was worth all the obstacles you had to
ReplyDeleteovercome.