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I was busy with deadlines at work and thought it would be easier if I didn't have a trip in the middle of them, so I rescinded my vacation request.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.

And yet, I felt like it couldn't be that easy.  So I dragged friends and family to bridal stores in California (where we lived at the time), in Miami, in Virginia (where we moved to), and yes, even to North Carolina (where there was yet another mega-bridal store) to look at other dresses just to be sure I really, really, really had the right dress.  No other dress came even close to making the cut.

Sometimes, you have to just trust you've made the right decision and move forward.  Trust yourself.

That dress and I went through a lot before the wedding.  I bought it in California, then found out we were moving to VA.  After hearing many horror stories of dresses getting lost or damaged in moves and on airplanes, I bought an extremely large suitcase (you have no idea how voluminous a dress with a 14-foot train is until you have to put it into a suitcase) and then had to have a box-custom built for it at a Pak-N-Mail and had it shipped overnight so it arrived at our new doorstep in VA the same day we did.  My alterations took place during the time of the sniper shootings, so I would nervously zig zag my way through the parking lot as I rushed to each fitting.  And then as the wedding day drew near, my mother and I drove down with the dress and various other wedding-related items in a mini-van to Miami -- where we encountered all kinds of mini-disasters including an hours-long traffic backup that forced us to eat lunch in a one-restaurant town and made us contemplate popping the cork on some of the wedding champagne bottles in the back of the mini-van.

The journey may be fraught with hazards, but the destination is worth it.

After the wedding, I had the dress carefully preserved and the extremely large box is sitting on top of our armoire in our bedroom.  It is one of the first things I see every day, that very large white box.  Many mornings it was a reminder of our special wedding day.  I would often daydream about one day handing the dress down to a daughter or daughter-in-law.  I didn't have a selection of heirloom dresses to choose from in my family -- one grandmother's dress was lost, and my mother was such a tiny bride I'm not sure I could fit even one leg into her dress!  As I am plus-sized, I knew this would not be the case for a future daughter, in fact it may be the opposite.  But I wanted her to have the option to have my dress to choose from, even if she took it and remade it to something of her choosing.

This will be a new tradition for the family, a new heirloom to pass down.  A carefully preserved memory from one generation to pass on down to the next.

Then I had a daughter.  One who wouldn't breastfeed well and one who wouldn't suck from a bottle well.  With terrible acid reflux that required more medication than prescribed for adults.  A daughter who cried and writhed with pain a lot and couldn't take in nutrition and whose weight percentile dropped from 90th to below zero in a matter of months.  Doctors couldn't figure out what caused these issues and every new visit brought a new scary round of tests.  Genetic tests, cystic fibrosis, other possibilities I didn't want to say aloud.  Failure to thrive is a non-specific diagnosis that simply means a child is not growing as she should, it is a label that makes you feel like a terrible mother and doesn't give you any information at all.  During this time, when I would wake up in the morning and see that damned wedding dress that I wasn't sure my daughter would live long enough to wear... would she ever live long enough to fall in love... would she live long enough to go to school... during those times, I would see that stupid box and I would sometimes just cry with all the pain that was inside me.  That white dress of hope became a symbol of all of my greatest fears.  I hated that dress. 

I hated it for reminding me of a future that may not ever exist.

After scary moments... an outpatient endoscopy that turned hypoxic, necessitating a hospital stay in a hospital with no beds just as an ice storm was moving in and ambulances refused to take us anywhere... miraculously... she recovered.  She is my stubborn, brilliant, wild-child of a JavaGirl.  The doctors still don't know what caused all her troubles, nor do they know what "cured" her, but she now eats like a truck driver while maintaining a tall, thin frame.  She's stronger than anyone else I know.  Myself included.  She has a future, any future she chooses.  I probably should pray for any young man brave enough to fall in love with her because she's probably not going to make life easy for him!

While watching an episode of Brothers and Sisters last night, one of the younger characters was trying on gorgeous, stylish wedding dresses and I thought, "Perhaps my wedding dress will be too traditional for my daughter by the time she gets married.  Maybe I should just get rid of it, donating it to Brides Against Breast Cancer so it can do someone some good now."  Although it's always been my intention to merely offer the dress to my daughter, knowing full well that the offer may be (politely) declined, I wondered if it was foolish to hang onto the dress for 20+ more years on the off chance she'd like it.  My mind wandered to other uses for it, as people had tried to convince me before to have it made into a baptismal gown, and then a recent Project Runway (yes, apparently I watch a lot of TV) had an amusing episode where "ex-brides" had their dresses turned into new fashions that better reflected their new lifestyles.

For now, the box will still sit on top of my armoire.  I think The Dress has become too much a part of my story right now.  From the frantic bride-to-be searching for perfection, to the happy bride walking down the aisle, to the newlywed settling into her new role, to the mother out of her mind with worry, to the woman trying to rejuggle priorities both physical and emotional, that big white dress has seen it all.  If Peter Walsh ever comes knocking on my door, I can prove I've "honored it the way it should be" with careful preservation and therefore shouldn't be put out at a yard sale.  And if I do decide to keep it until JavaGirl becomes a bride, I promise not to cry if she decides not to wear it.  Maybe I'll have it re-made into a sassy Mother of the Bride dress.

This is an original post to DC Metro Moms Blog.  When she's not chasing JavaBoy and JavaGirl, J.J. Newby aka JavaMom blogs at Caffeine And A Prayer.