Tuesday, 08 April 2008 | Dress wars

Everything has been moving along pretty seamlessly, so far -- Todd and I picked out a neat ring (from the 1920s!), found a venue we both love, set a date (October 18th), and hired several talented vendors who also happen to be people we know and like. The only thing that’s given me any trouble is the dress. I’m not too concerned (yet), as it’s still early in the process. More than anything, I’m curious what I’ll end up with.

Part of the problem is that I don’t really know what I want. I don’t think I want a proper wedding dress and am searching (so far) for something more like an evening gown. I’ve actually picked out an Oscars dress I like from a couple years ago, but so far I haven’t been able to find it, I know I couldn’t afford to buy it (though I’ve been entertaining the idea of having a copy made), and I don’t have a clue how it would look on me. I figure the best approach is to actually try on some dresses to educate myself -- to see what feels right, and to figure out what I can wear that doesn’t make me look like I’m wearing a costume.

The first dresses I tried on were, oddly enough, in front of both Todd and his parents. The three of them were very patient as I thumbed through dresses on racks, and they sat quietly on the couch with hands clasped while I tried them on, one by one. It was a bit embarrassing, stepping out of the dressing room wearing ill-fitting gowns that accentuate all the wrong parts, and even more embarrassing when Todd’s parents gave rave reviews. (Also, I’m not really sure I was ready to introduce Todd’s parents to my cleavage.) In the end, I found a couple C pluses and B minuses but nothing worth going broke for.

My second look at wedding dresses was at a consignment shop in North Carolina, this time with Todd and my parents. Although the store had some interesting dresses and amazing prices (like $40 amazing), most of them hung off me like a (sparkly) sack. My dad, ever the optimist, kept asking me in a curious tone, “What’s wrong with that one?” each time I rejected a dress.

My third trip, today, was to a fancy vintage store in Manhattan where they sell a century’s worth of dresses in remarkably good shape. It was a bad idea for me to go, though, because I was feeling frumpy and not the least bit glamorous. I need a hair cut (my hair is looking overgrown, flat, and limp), I was wearing my glasses and an outfit comprised of items I bought a decade ago, and I’d just eaten a cupcake, which made my stomach expand instantly as punishment.

The shopkeepers were in a collective bad mood and kept swearing at each other and at life in general, until they noticed the sad-looking girl combing through their dresses, and then they showed a passing interest in helping me. I dragged a wide variety of dresses into the fitting room. Most of them were from the 30s and 40s; some had delicate snaps held on by threads or rows of painstaking buttons and tiny waists that did not want to squeeze over my very inconvenient boobs. I kept getting stuck, with dresses half on, my eyes blinded by fabric, my arms pinned in the air, and my bare legs helpless. The dresses were fragile and pricey and many of them had beading and lacework and lots of other things that might tear if you try to free yourself from their grasp. I slowly worked my way out of them, cringing, nervous I might hear the sound of fabric tearing or beads falling to the floor.

There was cruelly no mirror in the dressing room, so if I wanted to learn anything, I had to step out and walk past the shopkeepers to see what I looked like. Without fail, no matter how awkwardly I was stuffed in a dress, one of the shopkeepers would tell me how the dress looked beautiful on me. I wanted to call them out and tell them they really didn’t have to say that, that it was actually kind humiliating, but of course I refrained, and just fled back to my private room to get all tangled up again.

Above, the one traditional gown I've tried on so far, and incidentally not one of the difficult ones. (Photo taken during shopping trip number one.)