The Wedding Dress
Weddings come in all forms from the very casual to the very formal, and yet almost universally, brides still pay special attention to their dress (even if the "dress" may take an unusual form of a bathing suit or other attire). Rare is the bride who doesn't hang onto her dress at least for a little while after the ceremony — although after watching many Clean Sweep episodes, I've learned all too many just shove them into the bottom of the closet instead of properly preserving them — which causes organizer Peter Walsh to shake his head in dismay.
Over time, however, I've come to realize that "The Dress" is far more than the satin and lace I wore to walk down the aisle to go from Miss to Mrs. That poofy white dress and its 14-foot train has come to mean different things to me at different points of life and I think its not quite done telling its story.
I actually found the dress before JavaDad proposed to me. No, I wasn't anxiously flipping through bridal magazines, waiting for him to pop the question. Actually, I found out we were the real deal when we were in the middle of an argument that I thought was a break-up argument. I don't even remember exactly what the argument was about... I think it had something to do with batteries. And then somehow led to whether or not our relationship was going anywhere and me accusing him of inertia or something and then him blurting out, "But I was going to propose to you when we went home to Miami for Thanksgiving and you canceled the trip." Oh.
Uh, yeah. I cancelled the trip because I was busy with deadlines at work and thought it would be easier if I didn't have a trip in the middle of them, so I rescinded my vacation request. Fortunately I had quite a romantic for a boss and the morning after our fight, I re-submitted my vacation request and the trip was back on. For efficiency's sake, I went pre-shopping for a dress at a local large wedding superstore, thinking that would make wedding dress shopping with my mother back home easier (I AM a Type A planner) when, WHAM, The Dress, made itself known. I tried not to like it. I tried not to try it on, and yet I couldn't avoid it. I was in love with the dress. I coyly avoided putting it on, so it would not be the very first dress I ever tried on. But I could not leave without trying it on. And once I did, everyone else in the fitting room knew it was the one for me. I put it on hold for 24 hours and spent all night tossing and turning about it. Isn't it crazy to buy a dress before you are engaged? And yet I couldn't imagine myself in anything else and since it was a one of a kind dress, I had to buy it or risk losing it. I spoke with my mother and JavaDad and they both agreed — go for it.
Continued on the next page
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