The lack of blogging over the last couple of weeks does not mean that nothing has been happening. In fact, Wedding continues to gather steam, albeit in a lovely ethereal type way. The most elegant rolling boulder you have ever seen, Wedding doesn’t go about its business in a steam rolling type fashion, it leaves no path of destruction. Instead she glides, almost floating above the earth leaving only a trail of liquid nitrogen and fairy dust in its wake. The motion can be compared to one of those marble-sphere water features, purposeful and yet peaceful.
Yes, it all continues to go smoothly. But like any well run production, Wedding is not dissimilar to that good old analogy of the graceful swan gliding along the river, so graceful and effortless to its audience, but paddling along like crazy underneath the water. At this point, and depending on the day, Wedding occupies probably about 55 – 60% of my brain capacity. Maybe 70% at times. For those of you who don’t know me that well, that’s quite a lot. It is really quite entrenched in my day to day life. My record run of consecutive ‘Wedding free days’ is probably about 3. Max. At a stretch.
Sometimes, it’s a great excuse for an escape from the less than satisfying activities offered by the daily bill paying facility – work. I imagine there plenty of brides to be out there in the same boat. Productivity is at an all time low. Not particularly bothered with reports, strategies or spread sheets, but in a way, Wedding in itself is really a research project. Everyone knows how important research is. It’s crucial really. Without it, we’d have badly planned, expensive, ill informed, uncoordinated weddings taking place all over the country. My employer doesn’t seem to mind. In fact, they take comfort in the fact that Wedding is on the horizon, assuming that its mere existence will be enough to keep me anchored right where I am without too much excess ambition, and definitely no scope for just pulling the plug. They are of the opinion that I “won’t be going anywhere” simply because I have a wedding to pay for.
Wedding to them, is like a form of collateral. A security bond that will prevent me from suddenly seeking alternative employment. They seem all too aware of the power of Wedding, and have assumed (pretty accurately) that a bride-to-be will think of nothing else but her impending nuptials.
It sounds bad. But before you suggest that I need to go to ‘life rehab’ I must stress that it’s not an all-consuming process. It’s like the marble sphere, purposeful and peaceful. And it might just be a quick look on the internet, a moment of insane spontaneous online bonbonniere shopping (I literally went all the way through to the checkout page) or a brief wedding related conversation. It’s not like every day is filled with intensive wedding planning. The planning has just simply reached a very complicated and labour intensive stage. It’s time for dress shopping.
OMG, dress shopping. It’s like a rollercoaster of emotion. Mostly exciting with a peppering of hope and optimism, but balanced with feelings of disappointment, anxiety and fear. The search for ‘the dress’ that’s been years in the making in your imagination. My little wedding scrapbook which accompanies me to any wedding related appointment invites remarks such as “Oh, look an organised bride”, leaving me to question what the unorganised bride looks like and how many categories of bride there actually are. Anyway, ‘organised bride’ comes with a book that contains cut outs of gowns, cropped creations of tulle, beads and satin, flowers, cakes and miscellaneous.
But it never receives the attention it deserves. In my limited experience, the shop attendant does a quick initiation, sizing you up to the type of dress that they think that you want. Which is pretty hard when they’ve know you for 3 seconds.
As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, I’ve tried on some amazing gorgeous dresses, and I’m sure if I was having 8, at least one would get a Guernsey. But I only get to choose one. It’s so shit. I’m not one of those people that have a definite and disciplined idea of things. I don’t have a favourite food – I like lots of food. Favourite movie? No. Don’t have a favourite. Colour? Well I like lots of colours. I can’t pick just one and call it my favourite. That wouldn’t be fair. In fact it would be impossible. I don’t have favourites. I like variety. And I like what I like. And I like it because I like it. I’m inherently ambivalent.
I dabbled in this kind of work back in my uni days. Women’s fashion. I know the qualifying questions that you’re supposed to ask, to get into someone’s psyche (a scary place in a world full of body dysmorphic disorders) to find out what they like about the item/dress/skirt etc but more importantly what they don’t like about it, so you can totter off and find them the perfect thing. It’s getting them to sell to themselves essentially with you only having to string a few buzz words together in any combination like ‘amazing’, ‘shape’, ‘gorgeous’, ‘tiny’, ‘stunning’, ‘length’, ‘proportion’ so on and so forth.
And so I stand, sometimes on a box, in front of a big mirror in a variety of gowns in varying shades of white and ivory, and stare blankly back at myself, and when we exceed the allowed time of awkward silence, I’m interrogated as to what I don’t like about it.
More awkward silence and blank stares ensue. I don’t dislike it. It’s just not my dress. Not much you can do about that. No amount of buzz words will change it.
“It’s lovely; I like it more than the last one I tried?” But that doesn’t mean I’m going to shell out thousands of dollars for something ‘nice’ that I could wear, if I was having 8 other wedding dresses. But even then, I might not. I’m really not good at this constructive feedback game. Because I know in my heart of hearts, that despite their best efforts and the exhaustive and repetitive process of squeezing in and out of layers of silk, lace, taffeta, and tulle, they just don’t have ‘my dress’.
You’re meant to get ‘that’ feeling, the one of knowing that it’s your dress. And that’s what all the brides say. But when you don’t get it, you start to question whether you ever will. So you go home, put yourself back together with some wine glue and start again, plan the next appointment, and get stupidly excited all over again. It's such an amazing, fun experience with a side of heartbreak. It's like going out for the most delicious, extravagant, expensive dinner and then walking out of the restaurant starving hungry, with an empty feeling and then you have to go to Macca's on the way home. A bittersweet symphony.
Bridesmaid’s dresses on the other hand has been a completely different story. A result of persistent research, searching for something which was a vague idea in my head, proved so so fruitful when one day just prior to wedding hour (lunch), I stumbled across the most stunning, perfect things that so honestly reflected everything I had been imagining and looking for without being able to verbalise.
The hardest thing about the BMD’s is coordinating times with a long distance MOH for a first try on, and the fact that they cost just slightly more than her own wedding dress (which we have since established will not be involved in any future benchmarking process due to a set of unique and uncanny circumstances!).
Other than that, it’s a win. Well a point on the board anyway. We still have to decide on the actual style, the embellishments and the colour. But what could be so hard about that? I’ll just pick my ‘favourite’ colour right? Uh oh.
