Ointment

[cosmolinguist]

holly_lama: I had to go wedding dress shopping today. Ew.
ivana_duboise: ha ha.
holly_lama: Don't mock my affliction!
ivana_duboise: Perhaps you should get some sort of ointment for that.

Two hours later I realized that I really hadn't hated it that much.

It was certainly a new experience, and I usually like novelty. Never before had I spent so much time in a dressing room, never were there people whose job it was to bring me thing to try on. Never before had I been expected to try on anything that could properly be described as a gown, which a lot of these were: heavy with satin and netting and ridiculously huge numbers on the price tags.

And meaning. It's weird looking around at the other young girls trying sparkly bodices and acres of satin and thinking I share something in common with them: we are here because some boy (this is, disappointingly, a pretty safe presumption) recently asked each of us to marry him. We are all trying to figure out what kind of bride we'll be. I know the world is huge but I'm still amazed at how many of us there are at one time.

But that was later. At the time, I did not look so pleasantly on the experience.

I was asked, "What do you think?" each time I opened the door of the dressing room. I kept flailing for answers. It's nice, it looks good. Wedding dresses seem very carefully engineered to make girls look pretty. Many succeed.

My mom and the bridal shop ladies were looking for a less objective reaction. "But do you like it? Are you comfortable in it? Could you see yourself wearing it?"

The ambivalence with which I voiced my replies was enough answer for them; I think they only spoke at all to hammer home that the point was for me to really like the dress. They sometimes spoke with the exaggerated precision and melodramatic emphasis that one might use with a small, and simple, child.

I am not so simple; I realize that I'm supposed to fall in love with one of the dresses, to jump and scream and hold my hands to my cheeks like those girls watching The Beatles.

I don't think that's going to happen.

All I really want is to not have the kind of wedding that requires one of these dresses.

I do not blame the bridal shop ladies for not knowing this. My mere presence in their stores leads them to assume I want what they're selling. I cannot blame them for thinking this. They're just trying to do their job.

But their job is to make me The Happiest Girl in the World™. And I just don't think that's going to happen. Not once I'm in their store.

Maybe it's my old demons, being easily pleased and having no real idea of what I want, rearing their ugly heads again. Oh, I have some idea: I quickly learned that I don't want a huge floofy skirt that sticks out two feet and weighs twenty pounds, I'd rather have a plain design than a heavily decorated one, I'd rather not have a train. In fact, this sort of thing rules out many—most—bridal-shop dresses, but still I'm left with a myriad of options, none seeming terribly better or worse than the others, in my estimation.

Mom had her own ideas about my ideas. As always when talking about anything relating to my wedding (even years ago when it was a purely hypothetical wedding), she has this way of saying "I know you'll want something very simple, nothing elaborate" in a way that makes it sound like "You'll want something boring." Her tone of voice makes it hard to restrain myself from disagreeing. I manage it only because her words are correct. But the way she says them still sounds unfair and wrong and something I need to contest.

After at least a dozen dresses in the second place and more than that in the first one, I noticed a subtle but serious shift in the atmosphere. Mom was being really weird. I couldn't tell if it'd really come on suddenly or if I was just noticing it now that I had a second where I was no longer forced to think about zippers and hangers and walking without tripping on the hem of a dress. She seemed angry about something, but I couldn't imagine what I'd done (I never doubted that her silence was due to anything but anger or that her anger was due to anything but me).

I looked at her for a minute and neither of us said anything, and then I went back into the dressing room for the last time. I almost wanted to cry then, but it was inconceivable there and then so I just changed into my familiar skirt and sweater and didn't think about anything. When I opened the door she was gone and I couldn't find her anywhere.

Following my mom around the mall afterward, I realized that it was very simple really. IF wedding in Minnesota, THEN church, dress, bridesmaids, flowers, et cetera, ad nasuem. I think that was why I wanted to cry. Not because I didn't want those things (though I didn't), but because I had never been asked.

My mom is too traditional to even contemplate, much less enjoy, other possibilties for a wedding; if I want her included at all, this is what I have to do.

I felt very alone.

I had been the center of attention all day. People had helped me into and out of clothes too complicated for me to manage on my own. They discussed my boobs and my hair and my height and everything else as if I were some cross between a work of art and a medical test subject. Still no one noticed me.

Comments

[ex-roomette173.livejournal.com]

This problem of The Dress and The Wedding is why W. and I have not had a wedding yet. I want one. We are legally married, but I do feel a public ceremony is in order. Yet I look at the traditional wedding and I cannot fit into it comfortably. I tried on dresses....they looked beautiful. Every single one. It was my little sister (who is 13 and outspoken) to say, "They all make you look more like a BRIDE than yourself and I hate that. I hate them all."

I am not The Bride I am ME and I cannot for the life of me find a dress that reflects that. I also refuse to have bridesmaids - much less (shudder) shaving everything that is individual off my friends to jam them all into one style/colour dress of my choosing.

I wish you all the best of luck. You are the only sane one. Weddings are insane.

[cosmolinguist]

You (and your sister) have it exactly right. The dresses all look very nice ... but they make me look like someoen else when I'm in them. They make me think I should be someone else, too—someone taller, maybe, and definitely someone with smaller boobs (and 36C is not freakishly large)—and I am angry about this. It's my usual rant about women's clothes, times a million.

[xianrex.livejournal.com]

Don't panic!

It's not the end of the world, nor does it last forever. Weddings are generally over before you know it, and then you start living again. Trust me - I've had two.

[cieo.livejournal.com]

Oh, dear. I know it's hectic and everything, but a girl is supposed to enjoy the time before her wedding. It's not supposed to be some sadistic gauntlet you have to run through before you can be with your guy in peace.

I've barely started reading you and it makes me upset that your mother never asked you about what YOU wanted for YOUR wedding. It makes me upset, but it doesn't surprise me. A lot of my friends have mothers who are very steeped in all that is good and traditional--it is not at all difficult for me to imagine their mothers reliving their own weddings vicariously through their daughters.

[cosmolinguist]

My mom never asked, I think, because she knew what I would say. So she limits herself to asking what kind of food and flowers I want, implying that i've already agreed to her wedding scheme.

[paper-crystals.livejournal.com]

Tell your Mom we can trade. I want the pretty dress, I want the pomp and circumstance, heck I even want to get pregnant and go through labor. I don't want to actually be married nor do I want to raise children. I realize that you are not to keen on having kids but we can hand off these responsibilities to Thane. Then we will all be happy, eh?

[cosmolinguist]

I am moderately keen on having kids but Andrew hates the idea, and I'm okay with that. I don't want to be pregnant, though. But you want to do that! So, you can have the wedding, and I'll be married. You can have the baby, and I'll take care of it. Sounds good to me.

[stealthmunchkin.livejournal.com]

It's not so much that I hate the idea of us having kids as that I really, really think I'd be a terrible parent. I don't want any kid having to grow up with me as a dad...

[cosmolinguist]

But you don't like kids either.

[paper-crystals.livejournal.com]

Yeah! It's all set then. We will just let our respective parents know.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

It's a shame you're having to go through this.

The things we do for love, eh?

I've been married twice, the first was traditional, but pared down to essentials.

The second was a registry office do where we wore what we damn well pleased and the guests were mostly pagans and goths.

[cosmolinguist]

We're not even doing it for love. :-) Andrew and I would be perfectly happy to live in sin. We're doing it for the visa.

Registry office weddings and such seem awfully appealing to me. After I told my mom that such things are common in Britain, she's gone around telling people that no one there has "weddings like ours." She was telling that to the bridal shop lady yesterday, in a voice that indicated she feels very sorry for all of you.

Little does my mom know: many of the voluntary guests—the people we want to invite, as opposed to distant relatives of mine that Mom wants to invite—are pagans and goths and suchlike. I can't wait to see what she thinks of that.

[kalieris.livejournal.com]

That settles it - when I show up for your wedding, I'll shave my head completely, be naked except for a cape, have woad tattoos painted all over my body, and say "Goddess bless" in nearly every sentence.

Mwahahahaha....

[cosmolinguist]

I'm counting on my (okay, Andrew's) friends to sabotage this Midwestern Protestant wedding in any and all ways they see fit.

[kalieris.livejournal.com]

We're your friends too, dear heart. Although I can easily imagine that those of us who are also Andrew's friends won't blend quite as easily into a Midwestern Protestant setting. :)

[cosmolinguist]

I know you're my friends—you especially!—but y'know, I hate to be so presumptive. :-) I'm quite glad to have all of you, but I don't know if I'm weird enough to fit in.

[kalieris.livejournal.com]

Your brand of weird, I think, is "stealth weird." You are less floridly and obviously weird than some of us, but the very things you think about and the way you end up caring about and noticing things that other people around you don't qualifies you as weird at heart. :)

[stealthmunchkin.livejournal.com]

Just in case you take Holly's comment the wrong way, BTW, we *are* very much in love (at least I am, and Holly was last time I checked ;) ) and do want to be together forever. But marriage wouldn't be something that would ever occur to me if there wasn't a good practical reason too...

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Ailz and I got married out of insecurity I think. We hadn't been together long and we felt the need to tie ourselves together with oaths and all that. If we could go back and do it over again we wouldn't bother with all the flummery.

So, yes, I know exactly where you're coming from.

[toastedtuna.livejournal.com]

Oh, of course! I don't think anyone is assuming Holly isn't happy about being with you forever & ever, but the whole trying on of the dress ritual can be QUITE overwhelming.

I say, you both elope and get married in jeans & t-shirts.

[kalieris.livejournal.com]

JC Penney catalog. Really. Less than $250 for a dress, you make your mom happy, and you don't have to deal with poking and prodding.

I really sympathize with how you're feeling. Although it was my then-fiancee's expectations I was dealing with, rather than my mother's, it was a very similar process. I've concluded that the wedding is about other people (no matter what they say about it being the "bride's day" it's really everyone else's BUT yours), and the marriage is about you (and your spouse).

I did swear to myself, though, that if I ever was insane enough to become legally and financially entangled with another person again, I'd wear something comfy, go to the justice of the peace, and have a nice lunch with the witnesses and spouse afterward. No fuss. The wedding itself should not be a bigger deal than the actual marriage, yanno?

Helga

[cosmolinguist]

My mom actually asked about the bridal catalog when we were in Penney's today; they said they didn't have it any more. I don't know if "they" means that store or altogether.

Mom wanted us to go to another bridal shop today, but it was closed when we got there. Ha! This may mean I end up with the dress I like less from yesterday (because it's the one she likes more), but I really don't care. I'm annoyed by people who assume I'm enjoying this; I just want it to be over.

[toastedtuna.livejournal.com]

You are the bride. Whatever you choose will probably make your mom upset, but she WILL get over it. You get what YOU want. Don't give in just to keep someone else happy, because, ultimately, they're YOUR wedding memories, and most of the pictures will be in YOUR photo album. You won't want to look at them and think, "I really should have stuck to my guns. I look so (insert adjective here)."

You know, of course

[ottercat.livejournal.com]

It's your wedding, and you should be able to do what you want!

Good luck with it all....