For the Love of Wedding Gowns

It is 4:30am and I am slowly sipping on my first cup of French roast coffee of the day as I blindly stumble to my bedroom in the dark hoping not to wake my boyfriend who is still snuggled in the bed fast asleep. As I open the closet door and begin searching through the closet yet once again for something to wear to work there it was starring back at me my Wedding Dress, a reminder of a past life, a past love, two broken hearts, and broken dreams.

 I can not help but wonder and ask myself why have I held on to this Wedding Dress for so long? I have no daughter to pass it along to, no nieces or cousins that would want to wear a second hand Wedding Dress, especially one without a fairy tale ending. Any other dress would have been long gone to a consignment shop, charity, or yes even to the trash. What makes women cherish our wedding dresses so much that we hold on to them even after our marriages are long over?

My full length gown was a tall, ultra slim column of shimmering fabric trimmed with hand made Italian lace and pearls. The dress was quite expensive for its time, this belle epoque vision graced the cover of Bride magazine in 1985. At the time in my size 4 dress I looked like a beautiful illusion from a magazine, but as we all know illusions always fade,  even the beautiful ones.

I'm over it! Now after twenty-six years of hanging around in my closet, being moved from one new home to the next, that georgeous dress and all the accompanying illusions and dreams are going to a better place - a place where everything is an illusion and I would not have it any other way. I am donating my Wedding Dress to the local Little Theatre and finally that dress may be seen for the first time, by an audience yearning for a happy ending. I hope that the theatre can use the dress in an upcoming production, if not maybe it will become lampshades and napkins I really don't care. But before it leaves my home..,maybe just maybe... one more time...I will again try it on...I still believe in and I am looking for the Fairy Tale, after all, there are several different versions of "...and they lived happily ever after."