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.

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.

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.

eBay? No way!

I tore a do-not-detach-under-penalty-of-law tag off a recently purchased throw pillow.

Nothing happened.

Then I went back to my Saying Yes to the Dresses blog from weeks ago, expecting to find Mother- of-the-Bride dress ads alongside it. The ads I wasn't supposed to click.

This  wedding gown ad was all that appeared.

                                                            

This had replaced the MOTB gown ads

Apparently blog ads are moveable feasts of consumerism. Here one day. Replaced by a new round of come-ons the next. Serendipity perhaps. At least I’d remain Adsense worthy.

But I was in the mood. The online shopping mood. No worries about running into friends in my workout clothes and  messy hair. No dressing rooms. No one’s opinion but my own at this early stage of the mother-gown quest.

I am not a shop-till-I-drop consumer. I like to save time - and money . With this in mind my Google search for Petite Mother of the Bride gowns began.

I started with the predictable links that appeared:

·         Petite Gowns: Shop Petite Dresses By Size & Style Free Shipping on Orders Over $200!             nordstroms.com

There were a few possibilities here. Too few. All of them black. Too black. I clicked the next website.

·     Karen Miller mother of the bride dresses. Ursula petite, plus size mother of the bride, groom, formal special occasion dresses, Nataya bridesmaid, wedding dress
      .http://www.audreysmotherofthebride.com/site/906987/page/634359/

This batch featured slim, horizontally pleated silouettes - too unforgiving for my pear-shaped dimensions. I tried another online store..

·         Mother of the Bride & Groom Dresses, Custom Mother Dresses . . . Custom-made fashionable and high quality Mother of The Bride Dresses with the lowest prices.http://www.thecustomdresses.com/mothers-dresses.html

Too build-a-bear-ish for me.

This went on, site after site, until

 

·    Mother of the Bride Dresses eBay:Petite Mother of the Bride Dresses: Tadashi Shoji Flowing Chocolate Silk Gown Dress 8P New with tags.http://shop.ebay.com/?_nkw=Mother%20Of%20The%20Bride%20Dresses

      

eBay? No way! I thought. But the more I repeated no way in my head, as I perused the site, the more it began to sound like no, wait, and then no wait just one gosh darn minute as a checklist popped into my head.

                  Size ✔

      Color ✔

      Flattering lines ✔

Could this bear of a bargain be just right?

"I Do" Have Lots To Do

I started writing MOMMY OF THE BRIDE seven months ago, just as the one-year countdown to Emily’s wedding began. The big day is now five months down the aisle – I mean road. Yep, I’ve started to think in wedding lingo the way my grandparents would think automatically in Italian before they could speak “the English” when they first came to America in the 1920s. It seems everything I do and think lately has taken on a wedding slant.  In my mind, last month’s “April showers” had nothing to do with rain. I had wedding shower planning on the brain.

At that unencumbered one-year-before-the Big-Day mark  - last October - we (referring to the WEdding  “WE”: Em, Ry, and Ry’s parents – Nancy and Matt)  had already chosen  the Barn at Wesleyan, the second Saturday in October, and the minister . WE then reserved blocks of rooms at nearby hotels - which, by the way are starting to fill. And WE watched the fall foliage a little more closely than usual, especially the display on the one-year-ahead -of-the-wedding   weekend, to get an idea of the colors and temperatures  we could expect in October of 2011.

That was the one-decision-at-a-time stage of wedding planning. One week, sign with the photographer. In another week or two, draft the  flower agreement. Later in the month –a  guest list pow-wow.  Leisurely planning for sure.

WE’ve now reached simultaneous decisions-making  time. Full menu choices (WE opted for fall fare), lighting arrangements(ceiling, yes; support beams, no), and figuring out the time to start and finish the party were the particulars of last week(last item being more complicated than one would think). Shower date,shower place, and shower menu are coming together this week, along with hotel-to-site and then back-to-hotel guest transportation for the day of the wedding. And I’m being asked pretty regularly, “Get your dress yet?”

 The singular questions that demanded the singular answers seven months ago are turning into the many questions that need answers today – and I expect will eventually have needed them yesterday, if you get my drift. So I'm rewording a popular T-shirt slogan to: I can only answer one  question a day. Today isn't that question's day. Or is it?  
Time to up this wedding workout.

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