It’s Not About The Wedding – Chapter 6 – It’s Not About the Dress
This is the 6th in a series of 16 chapters from a new manuscript I am working on called It’s Not About the Wedding: A Common Sense Guide to Getting it Right the First Time, or Any Time. I would love to receive any and all positive or negative feedback on this topic, particularly from those of you who are perhaps currently engaged to be married! Stay tuned for subsequent chapters to follow…
Chapter 6 – It’s Not About The Dress
Obviously, as a man, it’s easy for me to say it’s not about the dress. I’ll only see my bride in it for an hour or two, tops. Honestly, I have a hard time justifying spending hundreds or even thousands of dollars on something that will probably spend literally decades hanging in a closet or stuffed inside a trunk in the attic. Heck, I’m renting my wedding attire. Why can’t my bride?
At any rate, as previously mentioned, little girls will dream. Countless fairy tales, television shows, and popular movie storylines revolve around finding “the perfect dress”, and while the dress is a key component of any fairy tale wedding, not everyone has the luxury of a fairy godmother like Cinderella.
One story tells of a woman who grew up always knowing she would wear her mother’s hand-sewn wedding dress on her wedding day. Two days before the wedding, she and her parents went to pick up the dress from the dry cleaners, only to learn that the old and brittle fabric had basically fallen apart when the poor store owner attempted to clean it by hand. The dress was ruined. And yet, the wedding went forward and the bride looked ravishing in her store-bought replacement dress.
The truth is, unlike the wedding ring, which you will wear every day for the rest of your life, you will only wear your wedding dress once. Sure, it will live on through your wedding photos, and in some very rare cases, it may hold together long enough for your daughter to wear it in her own wedding, but you will only need to squeeze into it for a matter of hours. So, what’s the going hourly rate for a wedding dress? Of course, there is the “You only get married once” point of view. Perhaps your parents are paying anyway, what’s another $1000?
Now, I understand that if this isn’t your first wedding, it’s different. The majority of people getting married for anything other than the first time typically bypass some of the fanfare of the typical wedding. For me, getting married for keeps meant wearing something straight out of my closet. My bride wore a department store dress from Dillard’s that day, not Vera Wang, but WOW did she look beautiful!
The bottom line is this: There is nothing wrong with finding and buying “the perfect dress” for your wedding. You’ve dreamed about it for most of your life. You want to look amazing for your groom-to-be. It’s an integral part of what will surely be an unforgettable milestone in your life. The point is not to overemphasize the role of the dress. Do you really believe your betrothed is going to have any less of a sparkle (maybe even a tear) in his eye when he sees you coming down the aisle in a $250 dress? He’s looking at YOU, not the dress. Honestly, he’s probably thinking about getting you out of that dress as quickly as possible.
Little Drops of Nectar 