I'll start off by saying I know all of this is batshit insane. I know it's fiscally, morally, environmentally and, I dunno, supernaturally wrong, but that I am a crazy person is not news. The dress seems to be the only (thus far) part of this whole wedding planning dealie that has gone this nutso though, so it does seem that I haven't so much developed the Wedding Crazy as I am, as ever, afflicted with the I Hate My Body Crazy. So I've got that going for me. Also, this is all resolved now and there is a Choice. Or, at least there was before this morning, but I'm jumping ahead...
It was mid-April when the custom Etsy dress was commissioned. The seller sent a list of 15 different measurements she needed and I went to the dry cleaner and had the nice old man who does alterations take them. I went fabric shopping with k-dub and heathalouise at Mood. We found the most beautiful ivory chiffon that finally FINALLY made me feel pretty, and happy, and right. The dress was set to be finished by the first week of June. That gave me plenty of time to receive it, try it on and, if all was well, I could return Dress #4 (the one I bought at Short Hills with Mom and Sis). That would still leave me with the two $10 dresses (which, whatev) and Dress #5, the Sung bridesmaid dress (which I could try to sell on eBay or even get dyed and wear to someone else's wedding). All would be well. I finally started to relax.
One night in late May I was at Daddy-o with Chris and his friend when I got a text message from Sister. It said simply: Carrie Bradshaw is on the cover of Entertainment Weekly wearing your wedding dress!!!! I choked on my drink. She had to be mistaken. She'd only seen the small pic I'd emailed her, it must just be similar. I excused myself and ran around the corner to the magazine store. Sure enough, SJP in my dress, in the same color fabric I'd chosen, with lime green shoes. Whoa.
See, it just so happened that one of the pics I attached to my Alchemy request was of a Moschino minidress in a putty colored chiffon-y fabric. The order I snagged that pic from was for a straight copy of the dress whereas mine was to be a slightly longer, knee-length version. Since it was a designer dress, straight off the spring/summer 08 runway, it's not so crazy it ended up on one of the bajillion magazine covers of SJP in the weeks leading up to the SATC movie release. And really, it wasn't that I was upset that "my dress! my dress idea is ruined!" so much as I worried Chris would see it and we want to keep it a surprise. And other people would see it, because there's no way I was going to keep this a secret, and I kinda wanted it to be a surprise for most of them too. It turned out to be a complete non-issue, of course, as ET is a weekly and so in just a few days it was off the newsstands and I could go about my crazy business as usual.
June. It seems so long ago. I was getting ready to leave for work when the buzzer rang and it was USPS. The dress! Of course I immediately tore open the box and stripped to my underthings as soon as the friendly postman left. The fabric was beautiful, floaty and creamy and I lifted the layers up over my head and wriggled inside — where I promptly got stuck.
OH NO NO NO HOLY SHIT NO THIS IS NOT HAPPENING.
I started to cry, immediately and shamelessly. I knew this was my fault. I had lost a solid 10lbs or more and several inches by April yet I knew I had spent May undoing all my hard work. But still. But still! I tried again, and again, and again. At one point I'd wriggled all the way in but it was supertight around my upper arms and back and chest and all was ashes and then I freaked out even more because I was stuck and alone and half naked and how the hell am I going to get this back off and get to work and I just want to die. It was bad. I haven't talked about it with anyone but Chris til just now because it's so shameful and embarrassing in so many different ways. But it happened and it's over and no, I don't know what I'm going to do about the dress, I'm not ready to figure that out yet.
The Etsy seller had mentioned in one of her emails that she was sending along a petticoat with the dress, the one she had used for the progress pics she'd sent me, for free, as her wedding gift to me. I was very grateful, and excited, because that vague, half-formed idea I'd imagined during all of this definitely involved a prominent, slightly poofy but not costumey a-line skirt. Once I'd calmed down a smidge and developed a way to get the dress on and off, I started imagining what I could do to make it fit (lose weight, get sleeves cut off, pray) and tried the dress with the petticoat. It turned out the dress was layer-y and poofy enough on its own so I laid the petticoat aside, wriggled back out of the dress and went to work, a sad, dejected mess.
All day long I thought about the dress. The dress, the money, the petticoat, my body, tailors — a continuous loop of desperation. I didn't talk to anyone, didn't tell anyone the dress had arrived because I didn't want to talk about how big of a failure I felt. On my way home, I had a small thought. A tiny spark of an idea. Something half remembered from a few months ago, when I was discussing one of the previous dresses with cantaloupe. I practically ran the last few blocks and burst into the apartment, tore off my clothes, put on the petticoat and dove into the closet where I unearthed Dress #4, put it on and checked it out in front of the full-length mirror.
Yup. There it was. My wedding dress.
Posted by beth at July 01, 2008 05:13 PMHooray!! What a relief, the right thing was bound to fall in your lap (even if you had to work for it a bit, hmmm?).
Posted by: Claudia on July 7, 2008 07:30 PM
