A White Dress's Tale

A white dress's tale~

How my wedding dress had a happy ending after all.

 First of all, it doesn’t have a name.

I did name my car and my Macbook, but not my dress.

Even the style doesn’t have a "name-name", like "Kelsie" or "Nicole", 

the way jeans and shoes sometimes do. 

It just had a style number.

“A-12998” or something like that.

I don’t even remember.

The specific style is called “mermaid.”

Instead of billowing fabric coming out

At the bride’s hip,

Like the “Cinderella” gowns,

This gown hugged me all the way

To the thighs, where a cocktail dress would have ended.

There, it opened out into gathered stage-curtain-like ruffles of silky white.

The gown had no straps.

It did have the same silky fabric stretched across my torso in three places,

topped with a white beaded “brooch” and between those pieces of fabric,

There was tulle mesh with elegant bead-and-sequin flower patterns sewn in.

It laced very intricately down the back, like a Victorian corset.

The front looked like a corset too because it dipped in the middle a bit

For the added illusion of “cleavage”.

(I have none).

It was such an intricate design, the best thing I could do for it

Was wear a simple veil and no other accessories.

It was accessorized all by itself.

I didn’t purchase this dress three months before the wedding.

I chose it as a birthday present from myself and from my dad,

Almost three years ago. 

It was August 2011, my 24^th birthday.

I went to the mall, which is one of my favorite things to do.

I was accompanied by my fiancée (at the time).

I decided to go to David’s Bridal, which is next to the mall.

He knew what I was going to do, so he went to Best Buy.

Normally, a bride-to-be would probably come with friends.

At that time in my life, I didn’t really have any real friends.

I was fine thinking for myself.

I’d seen “Say yes to the dress!” on TLC,

And I’d seen the bride’s friends all get in spats over a gown.

I was here on my own,

And there was a big sale that day.

First, inquired about the dresses that were advertised as being

“only $99!” in the ad online.

It turns out they were short and boxy and not for me.

I started working my way up and down the aisles, pawing at gowns

where I could see a favorable detail or bit of flare peeking out.

Sometimes they would look like they were going to be something

Jaw-dropping from the side,

But when I’d pull them out and see the front,

They were really not.

I looked at a mannequin that was wearing a certain featured type of gown,

And I fell in love right away.

It was cream, a mermaid style, with what looked like “feathers”

Made of little pieces of tulle for the skirting at the bottom.

It had a black ribbon tied around it, which I did not like.

The sales woman said it could be ordered with a different colored sash.

I loved it, I love it.

But then I looked at the tags.

It was by Vera Wang.

For those of your who don’t know the name,

Her designs cover women’s fashions, home décor, fragrances and purses

And they come at a price.

The price on the dress was $1200.

Considering some brides wear dresses worth $12,000, that’s not bad.

But considering my finances at the time,

My undeveloped plans,

And the way my family wasn’t ready for this wedding to happen,

$1200 was asking way too much.

I needed to stay at “$600 or less”.

So I asked the sales woman for styles like the Vera Wang,

And she brought out three.

One was the same color but it had straps and a bust that didn’t work for me.

One was pure white and more “poofy”

And the third one was the one I described at the beginning of this story.

When I got to the third dress,

The associate had laced it up,

And I saw a three-way panoramic view of myself,

It just felt right.

She played around for a few moments with putting

pins in different places since it was the floor model.

Finally she declared that “I needed a 2 Petite.”

So we put in the order.

She tried to up-sell and cross-sell several accessories,

But since the date I’d set was still more than a year off,

I only agreed to the slip that goes underneath

And a preservation kit.

I was kind of an idiot with this stuff.

I realize now that you shouldn’t buy the dress

until much closer to the date.

I must have been too confident in the fact that

My figure never has shifted by more than five pounds.

And too confident in the plan to tie the knot.

I set the date as being in October of 2012.

I received the call that the dress had arrived at the shop in early September (still 2011).

I hung it in a closet in the third bedroom of the house I lived in, and I put a chalkboard

On the door that said “Amy’s wedding closet”.

There were a few books of ideas in there,

As well as a possible head piece that wasn’t a veil but it was pretty.

Only two months later, tragedy struck.

My fiancée and I had been arguing a lot.

We both had some major personal issues.

He was taking medication for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder,

And it made him crazy.

He was also drinking.

I wasn’t doing either but I had severe, unmanaged anxiety

That was turning into anger, depression, irrational behavior

And all of it was getting taken out on my loved one.

The largest problem, of course, was that neither of us

Was factoring God into our lives or our love.

It all came to a head in mid November when he texted me at work

And said “I have been thinking, and we need to have a talk after work.”

My heart sank. I knew what was coming,

But I also felt determined to change the course of it.

That night, I didn’t get any sleep.

We were up very, very late.

We weren’t yelling. We weren’t swearing. We weren’t having tantrums.

It was seemingly calm and quiet in the house that night.

But it was the worst kind.

It was the kind of quiet you hear when something has gone horribly wrong.

When the long, tearful conversation was over,

I was tied into too many knots to sleep.

He had just told me that he needed to be apart from me for awhile,

To heal and to work on some things

And that I needed time too.

It meant the wedding was off.

It meant we would set our respective statuses to “single” online

And we would only be friends.

I tried not to lose hope, though.

For at least a month, we did stay friends.

He moved what he’d been keeping at my house out of it.

His Wii, his movies, his food, the clothes he kept there.

It took him awhile to round it all up because he spent most of his time with me.

After he was gone, he still came by to visit me.

We would talk, and then we would cry.

I would go to open my mouth to yell at him “for giving up and that he needed to come back to me right this moment!” but no sound would come out.

I was too tired. I was too hurt. I sat there and said nothing.

And I think he took it to mean that I didn’t care.

Soon after, he went through a phase of clamming up and being angry

And he refused to talk to me.

His family didn’t want me to reach out to him.

I was completely alone.

The new year started out dark. And ugly.

My sorry state matched the grey skies and brown dead trees.

The cold outside was no match for the ice in my heart.

And it was during that time that I remembered when I’d moved from the house I was in

To a smaller condo, I’d put the dress in the second room’s closet

And forgotten about it.

So I tried to give the bridal store’s 1-800 customer service number a call.

I was going to return it for a full refund.

As it turns out, they don’t “do” refunds.

If your event was cancelled, you can turn off their emails and the bridal

Magazines that come in the mail, but you can’t return the gown.

All you can do is sell it on Ebay.

I think I yelled at that girl that day.

“You don’t understand! I’m NOT getting married!

I don’t want anything to do with the dress!”

But it fell on deaf bound-by-corporate-policy ears.

And now I’m glad they wouldn’t take it back.

A few months later, I had the chance to send it away

To Lakeland, where my parents live.

My dad placed it in a storage unit there.

By then, I was starting to make some positive changes in my life.

But I was still angry at my then ex-fiancee.

So my dad and I would throw around ideas.

“Maybe you should sell it” he said.

“I was told I’d only get $200 for it.” I replied.

“Oh well, it’s better than nothing.” He’d say.

“But it’s so sad. It’s worth more than that.

Maybe I should just keep it and eventually

Have it altered into a NEW dress someday,

When I meet “mr right” for real. …… if that ever happens.”

I’d reply back.

“You can’t keep it here forever.” He’d tell me.

“Then you sell it.” I’d say.

I didn’t know why, but it was like one of my heart strings

Had reached out and tied itself to that dress.

I couldn’t bring myself to just get rid of it.

That summer, I was fully involved in seeking God.

I was back in church and making Christian friends.

I was on the up-and-up.

The only dark spot was the unanswered question:

“What about ever being someone’s wife?”

I tried to talk to other young men,

And the same pangs in my heart

Prevented me from just moving on and getting over…. him.

My ex-fiancee. I’d invested 2.5 years in him before the break up.

I’d laughed with him, cried with him.

Held him. High-fived him.

Fought for him, fought with him.

Spent money on him.

He’d invested in me too.

We’d shared so much and even gone on a few mini-trips together.

The first time I ever got to meet him for a date,

I “just knew he was special.”

Finally, I received a very unexpected blessing,

And that day was the happiest day in the entire year.

It was late summer 2012.

It was the day I got to talk to him for three hours,

And it was like I met him for the first time all over again.

The old animosity was gone,

He’d stopped being out of sorts and so had I.

We were having a magical evening talking.

By the end of the year, we were close again

But more like best friends.

In early 2013, he still hit a few “bumps in the road”

In his PTSD healing process,

But we remained close.

I started referring to us as a couple again.

After all,

We weren’t seeing other people.

By the end of 2013, two years after the split

And maybe a year after the reconciliation,

The “M” word was coming up in conversation a lot.

(No, not “mommy”…sheesh)

“We should talk about our future. We should talk about getting married”.

Or more commonly “You keep dodging the subject.”

He would say that to me.

After getting burnt, I wasn’t in a hurry to plan

Anything so grandiose and life changing

Unless I was sure we were ready.

I’d changed.

In the beginning of those 2.5 years,

We’d talked about wanting to elope almost right away.

And I’d gone with the idea.

We just hadn’t done it because of his battle with PTSD.

Somehow, I’d always known it wasn’t God’s timing.

This time was different.

A mentor, a few friends, and my beloved’s parents

Were all kind of prodding me to “get going.”

“Stop just dating without there being marriage

at the end of the run….”

They were right.

And this time, at the very end of 2013,

When we set our date for June 2014,

It was right.

What about the dress?

In summer of 2013,

before I had started planning anything at all,

my dad’s lease on the storage unit ran out.

The dress was neatly packed in a bin,

So he moved it, and the other items with it,

To a cabinet in his office at work.

But it couldn’t stay there very long.

So on a trip to Lakeland in August,

I took it home with me.

I hadn’t seen the gown in nearly 2 years,

And I’d forgotten how pretty it was.

Somehow, all the anger I felt during the breakup

had made it ugly in my mind’s eye.

I had been visualizing something that was “poofy”,

awkward and covered in glitter.

Like an 80’s prom dress nightmare.

What I saw was the sleek, silky elegant gown

With the tiny sequin and bead flower details.

It actually looked prettier than it had when I’d bought it.

Could that have been the lighting in the store?

Or was I seeing it with my heart instead of my eyes now?

I had, after all, read a few Christian books about love and marriage.

They cast the entire scene of a woman in white and an altar

And God smiling down upon the holy occasion

in the rosiest of romantic lights.

Perhaps by then I’d learned to kind of see myself

As God would see me, becoming one with the man

He chose for me.

In summer 2013, I hadn’t officially become aware

of whether or not it would be the man I’d loved,

lost and then reconciled with again.

I was still afraid God would show me

That we were only meant to be friends

And someone else would come along much later.

(Even though I thought I wouldn’t love another quite as much).

In February of this year, I got to put the dress on.

Something I hadn’t done in 2.5 years.

I had been right- my body didn’t change.

It still fit perfectly and only needed a few minor alterations

On the seams by my torso,

to tighten a bit of loose fabric on the belly.

(otherwise, I would have looked like I was concealing a “secret” in my “oven”.)

The second time I tried it on was to have those alterations assessed, in April.

In May, I tried it on a third time to be sure they worked.

And they did.

The fourth time I put it on was on June 7.

It “wow’d” my mom and my beloved’s mom.

And my bridesmaids.

And my father.

And all the guests and family.

Most importantly…..him.

My new husband.

The same young man I dated for 2.5 years,

Started planning a wedding for

And then broke up with.

The same young man who healed

While I healed

And then we were reunited again.

Here he stood, at the altar, in a suit, with a huge smile on his face.

He hardly could contain the excitement and

“feelings of pure joy”, he said.

Now the dress is in most of about 280 pictures.

And its in 40 peoples’ memories.

At this moment, it is in a large cleaning facility

In Texas.

This is where all the dresses go

When you purchase a preservation kit

From David’s Bridal.

Truth be told, I was relieved when my husband

Dropped off the large pre-paid box

At a shipping depot for me.

I was feeling too emotional to just drop the dress off

Somewhere and leave it.

A few years ago, all I wanted to do was get it out of my sight.

Now I am anxious for the day

It is mailed back to me.

(Which could take six weeks).

Where will its story end?

I don’t know.

But I’m hoping that for as long as

I don’t change physically ,

I will get to wear it more than once

So he can adore me in it again

And again

And again.

And again.