The other day my colleagues and I were talking about wedding dresses. I’m not sure how we got on to that subject, but we did. One minute we were talking the finer points of liver transplant surgery and the next we’re talking wedding dresses.
I was asking my colleagues why many women keep their weddings dresses closeted away years after the big day? It’s a question I’ve asked from time to time, but the answers I receive usually leave me with more questions.
After our wedding, my wife had her dress dry-cleaned and boxed, where it has sat in my in-laws storage room for the last 11 years. I don’t think she’ll wear the dress again, so why does it sit in a closet?
Call me practical (I, like most men, returned my wedding day get-up the day after our wedding. I didn’t even have to pay to have it cleaned), but if the dress has some value why don’t we sell it.
The responses I have received when I pose that question are typical. Some express sentimental reasons for keeping the dress. But surely sentiments are found in our love and the memories, rather than the physical thing stuffed away in a box that we’ll never use or rarely see again?
I was asking my colleagues why many women keep their weddings dresses closeted away years after the big day? It’s a question I’ve asked from time to time, but the answers I receive usually leave me with more questions.
After our wedding, my wife had her dress dry-cleaned and boxed, where it has sat in my in-laws storage room for the last 11 years. I don’t think she’ll wear the dress again, so why does it sit in a closet?
Call me practical (I, like most men, returned my wedding day get-up the day after our wedding. I didn’t even have to pay to have it cleaned), but if the dress has some value why don’t we sell it.
The responses I have received when I pose that question are typical. Some express sentimental reasons for keeping the dress. But surely sentiments are found in our love and the memories, rather than the physical thing stuffed away in a box that we’ll never use or rarely see again?
Others contend that a daughter may one day want to wear the dress at her wedding. A nice thought, but unlikely given that it may not fit, and the daughter may want her own dress, not something her mother wore a few decades before. When I told my colleagues that I have two sons, and I doubted they would need their mother’s hand-me-down wedding dress, they suggested that my son’s future wife might want to wear the dress. Right! With the utmost respect to mothers-in-law the world over, I really doubt that my son’s future bride (let’s not think too far ahead, they aren’t even in Kindergarten yet) will want to wear her mother-in-law’s wedding dress.
My ever persistent colleague, who interestingly got rid of the dress she wore at her wedding some time ago suggested that someone in the future may want to wear the dress. The future is now. Someone right now may want to wear that dress.
Wouldn’t it be nice to pass on a dress to someone who may not be able to afford a new one, and at the same time put a few bucks in your pocket? Maybe take a trip with your husband, and create some new memories.
Posts
1 comment:
My mother and father were born in England in the very late thirties / very early forties respectively. As a result, they grew up in a culture of frugalness which persists with them to this day.
(Frugal is now trendy. Who knew? But I digress.)
In the sixties, my parents were invited to some formal party or another, somehow related to my dad's job. My father had a tuxedo already (called a 'dinner jacket'), as it was expected that you own one if you attended a university in London in the late fifties and early sixties, which he did. My mum, however, didn't have a formal gown.
Her solution? She took her wedding dress out of storage, hemmed it, and dyed it blue. Presto, instant gown. She wore it to the event an no one was the wiser.
- Geoff G.
PS I wore my father's dinner jacket to my high school graduation dance. Perhaps if you'd bought and saved your wedding tux it would have had more future use than the dress.
Post a Comment