Spinning in Place

The Mommy of the Bride doesn’t  know what direction to head in this week. She considered the  path to Em’s wedding  journey-enough, for now, especially with the bridal shower in a couple of weeks and just two months to go to the Big Day. .

 But a few weeks ago Em and Ry decided to move from an apartment five minutes away to one 55 minutes, by Google map measure. It will place him closer to his physician assistant intern rounds. And as if that isn’t flux enough for one month, Brother of the Bride moves to Boston tomorrow for a sports management internship. 

Good thing I have a GPS.   

I ‘ve been lucky to have my son and daughter living very close to me for the last two years . Not having them spontaneously pop in for dinner or to do a wash will take some getting used to.  I won’t get to walk Em and Ry’s dog as often.

But as much as I loved their close proximity, I know they have to choose their directions.

• What if my grandfather and grandmother remained close to their mothers in Quaglietti, Italy– and did not board a ship to America in the mid-1920s?
• What if my father and mother remained in Brooklyn, New York to be near their parents, 35 years later?
• What if Em and her brother remain here – because of me?  

Same answer for each. None of their lives would  have played out as they should have.

Since You Asked

“So when do we get to see this dress? The suspense is killing me,” a FB friend asked after the Dream (Gown) Come True post last week.

Expect a photo post October 9 – the day after the wedding. A bride is entitled to unprecedented entrance in an, as yet, unseen dress. By the groom, at least.

It is in this regard that the Mommy of the Bride almost blew it  three months ago, when she used a few too many details to describe the bridal gown in the Snip and Tuck post. . (Notice the MOTB has to write this in third person because it is still so difficult to admit). But, in her ever-so-slight defense, there was no picture. The MOTB is not that stupid. She just got carried away with details. She should have known the devil is in the details. 

Minutes after that very early morning post, the  MOTB received an e-mail from the ever-judicious Bride-to-be.

I think I'd feel better about the dress being as much as a surprise as possible (especially since in an earlier blog you mention that the dress should be a surprise to the readers.)

The Bride-to-be was correct. The MOTB  did write that,  ten months ago.

The now MMOTB (Mortified Mommy of the Bride) immediately reworked the tell-all paragraph and hoped the mental picture was not one  that would be easily processed – by a male brain. After all, could Prince William really envision how singularly beautiful his Kate would look after these details of the royal gown were published before their wedding?

A design of individual flowers, hand cut from lace and hand-engineered onto ivory silk tulle would be worked onto French Chantilly --  combined with English Cluny lace --  hand-worked in the Irish Carrickmacross needlework tradition, in a gown drawing on the fashions of the Renaissance with a touch of modernity, characteristic of the artistic vision of Alexander McQueen.

I hope not.

Dream (Gown) Come True

The saga of the dress continues. . .

The dress of Em’s dreams was larger than Em – much larger. Say, five sizes.

Seamstress #1 said the alteration could be done – but not by her – she was a costumer (from Em’s theatre group at college, about 100 miles away). But maybe  seamstress #2 – about 50 more miles away - could do it.

I was beginning to get worried. If seamstress #2 reneged, this must-have gown could have been headed for an eBay auction -not that I have anything against eBay! But that wasn’t the marry-tale ending I wanted for the dress of Em’s dreams. It had too much of a settling-for-second-best feel to it. Fine for, let’s say, a rent-a-car, but not the raiment of the bride.

Seamstress number # 2 recognized what was at stake.  Jenn couldn't wait to get her hands on the gown.

“Sometimes I get an idea and am up at three in the morning, pinning and sewing,” she said as cousin Rachel and I oohed and aahed  at her progress at yesterday’s fitting.  The gown will travel back from Lowell with us in a few weeks. From the looks of its perfect fit on Em, there’s just the hem to do.

Jenn's  middle-of-the-night comment led me to imagine her, in the wee hours of the night, restless, until she gets the picture in her head to appear on the headless mannequin form before her. The vision brought me back to a scene in Disney’s Cinderella, mice and birdies singing in a turret as they assemble Cinderella’s dress for the ball the way Jenn has reassembled Em’s dress for the wedding. Since, for the time being, I’m bound to secrecy on the picture-perfect image of Em’s gown, Cinderella's remake will have to do.

Heat Wave

Record-breaking heat in these parts lately.

103 degrees in the shade yesterday.

Really.

No stagnant air factor at work here. One that would make it feel hotter than it is - just like when a wind chill factor can make 19 degrees feel like 2 below. (I only added that part about the wind chill to try to make me feel cooler. Didn’t work.)

No, the 103 is a true blue – or should I say red hot - never-been-reached-in Connecticut -on- July 22 temperature. More of the same is expected today, July 23.

JULY 23!

 How can that be? Where is this summer (that didn’t feel like a summer till a couple of weeks ago – and now feels like a pizza oven) where is it going?

For me, there’s only one answer to that question. Day by day, it’s getting closer and closer to Em and Ry’s wedding, now only  77 days away.

I remember at just about 777 days, when they got engaged two years ago. That was the easy theoretical talking-wedding  stage.

                     It’ll be a country setting . There’s a horse farm they’re looking at.

At about 700 days a barn was reserved (sans horses). If you don’t book the barn of choice a couple of years in advance, you don’t get the barn of choice.  

Then the next couple of hundred days got us through no-pressure brainstorming and lots of conversations that ended with Oh but we don’t have to decide that now.

The next couple of hundred days we had to start deciding - wedding dress, seamstress, guest list …

The next couple - fare, guest accommodations, décor, photographer…

Now there is no next couple of hundred days. Not even 100.

And I find myself thinking – the heat is on.

Mail Order (Mother of the) Bride

When the package appeared on my porch, I still pretty much doubted my fashion mission - accomplished - with an eBay order. A 12” X 14” priority-mail box doesn’t exactly emit MOTB gown-worthiness through its cardboard. The 10” X 12” plastic bag of merchandise inside the official USPS parcel evoked even greater hesitancy. This is probably going back I thought as I scissored a careful slit through the see-through wrapping, careful not to damage the goods (or not-so-goods) inside.

I unfolded a brown mass of chiffon out of the bag. Deep brown and deeply wrinkled - from packaging. Yet, on a hanger the dress fell into a long line that had – let me say – possibilities. This mail order wasn’t a wash – yet.

I hooked the rather crumpled garment onto a hanger and set it  behind the bathroom door. Took a shower. Emerged, myself, slightly wrinkled. The dress, however, seemed to have ironed itself out in the steamy after-bath. The thin pleats above the slightly raised waist of the dress, straightened. The flow of the A-line skirt below the pleats, softened. Nice hanger presentation, I had to admit.

But a perfectly-engineered standard hanger and the imperfect construction of my torso are vastly different display apparatus. Still dubious, I donned appropriate undergarments.

Appropriate undergarments, in my mind, were my best undies. Not any kind of upper corset or lower girdle that would allow the dress to fit like casing over a sausage. I wanted a gown that would comfortably fit over everyday (er) foundations and allow for easy  (er) execution of everyday (ahem) functions.I 'd heard too many horror stories about breath-constricting zip ups and impossible zip-downs from MOTB’s I have known.

I gathered  the skirt  and put my head into the circle of its hem, up through to the deep V-neck of the garment. The bodice set firmly against my upper body. The bottom seemed to float over me from the waist down. Hmmmmmm. 

But the gown hadn’t passed the zipper test yet. Until it did, I thought it best to err on the side of doubt  as I reached back to the pull tab and raised it from hip . .  to waist . . . to mid back . . . to . . . BINGO . . .   the top stop. 

 Then I turned my back toward  the mirror.Metal teeth meshed smoothly.  I turned again . Viewed classic lines.  Tasteful décolletage.

This garment – with tags that affirmed its Tadashi Shoji design, not to mention its full price, slashed to half price, slashed to eBay price – this gown was a keeper.

Yay or Nay ?

Yay !

Let the Buyer Research

I had my doubts about the eBay  Mother-of-the-Bride dress I happened upon, but the ad guaranteed quick delivery and no greater risk than the cost of return postage. This was nowhere near the gamble taken on by the way too patient bride-to-be I had read about. She spent two months waiting for a wedding dress from ‘China Nation’ on eBay (cost: 170 pounds --  $275 U.S currency) I would have cancelled the order after a week or so and hustled to the local bridal shop. Her eBay buy  finally arrived two weeks before her wedding – wrong size, cut, material, the beading patchy and peeling.  





He designed this MOTB's dress



Too bad the hapless bride of the misbegotten gown didn’t do the kind of online research that led me to her predicament. A search term as generic as “eBay gown complaints”  directed me to a general eBay warning to stay away from copies of British gowns made in China . My gown of interest, a never worn Tadashi Shoji  design -- tags included --  would be shipped out of Kansas. The  seller had good ratings. The eBay warning  site also offered a link to an Internet guide on how to spot a fake designer label.

After I found the designer carried in Nordstroms and Bloomingdale's and checked out celebrities in his gowns, I felt ready  to take the plunge as  deep as the (almost) off-the-shoulder neckline of his 2010 gown that caught my eye. When the package arrived, three days later, I wondered if my next blog would be a yay or nay.