Thursday, October 1, 2009

Wedding Plans

The rest of the semester was a blur. Finals and projects were intermixed with dress shopping and cake tasting. We set an initial wedding date for August, but decided we'd rather get married in July. Wedding planning went into overhaul as my Mom began redecorating and re-landscaping. My brother would be getting married in June, and both of us were planning backyard receptions at my parents' place. I knew I needed to find a dress before I left Utah for the summer because temple-ready dresses just aren't found in southern California.

My mom flew into town one weekend and we did what we do best: we shopped. We hit every bridal store from Spanish Fork to Salt Lake. I was terrified that we wouldn't find a wedding dress before she had to leave, and I knew I couldn't make the decision alone. After a long day of trying on what felt like hundreds of dresses, I still hadn't found THE ONE. We had one last store to try in Salt Lake. It was small and boutique-ish (interpretation: tiny inventory) so I didn't set my hopes very high. Between the two of us, we found four or five dresses to try, and I entered a dressing room to begin the fashion show.

Three dresses in, I still hadn't found anything worthwhile. The thought crossed my mind that maybe I was the problem, not the dress. No wedding dress was going to magically transform me into something I wasn't, and until I fully understood that, I was never going to find a dress. Still... if I didn't feel beautiful in my wedding dress, I knew it wasn't going to work. My mom zipped up dress number 4 as I sighed and turned to look in the mirror.

My heart stopped. This was it. This was the dress. THE dress. It was simple, with a dropped waist and a square neck. The skirt was full, but not too full. It was white satin, except for a wide sash around the waist, which was a deep crimson. When the saleswoman confirmed I could get the sash in other colors, I was ecstatic as I envisioned a cream sash against the white. I turned to my mom and could tell she was thinking the same thing. This dress was made for me. It was sophisticated, it was conservative, it was elegant, it was... $1300?!!! I stopped breathing when I saw the price tag. WHAT?? I swallowed hard, then took a deep breath and tried to hide my disappointment.

"You know, on second thought, I think we should keep looking."

My mom protested. She insisted that if I loved this dress like she thought I loved it, then I should get it. But that price... I just couldn't do it. My mom told me how she was engaged to my dad, she had found her perfect dress, but it was a little more than she had wanted to spend. To this day she hates the wedding dress she ended up with and wishes she had bought the dress she loved. Although I appreciated her empathy and desire to make me happy, I still wasn't ready to drop so much cash on a dress I would wear only once. I decided I would keep this dress as a last resort.

A very last resort.

1 comment:

Kathleen said...

You should have let me buy the dress. It was beautiful. That being said, you were a beautiful bride and I loved you in the dress you wore.