Things I learned from my wedding - Part 3 - ARMPITS

Mom and Dad

As I mentioned in a previous post, I wore my mother's wedding gown for my wedding.  The dress was sewn by my grandmother on her treadle sewing machine.  I grew up worshipping that dress.  Turns out my mom didn't.

I would pour over the photos of my parents' wedding and knew every detail of that dress, from its regally-wired standup collar, to the row of satin buttons down the middle, to the delicate point of the sleeves at the wrist.  Recently, I googled "1950's bridal gown pattern" and, after browsing through a few hundred vintage pattern photos, eventually found out it was Vogue "Special Design" pattern #4171.

When I first started sewing in 7th grade, Vogue patterns were a distant fantasy.  I would never have dreamed that I could sew such a pattern, or even wear anything associated with the Vogue name.  It was the best of the best, and the patterns were the most expensive of all.  I was a McCalls or Simplicity gal through and through.  I eventually worked my way up to Butterick, but I can count on one hand the number of Vogue patterns I've sewn.

So, for my mom to have chosen such a pattern must have been a big deal at the time.  I guess that's why I was shocked to learn that mom didn't love her dress as I did.  Maybe she would have preferred a store-bought dress?  I don't know.  I never asked her.  

After my wedding, mom took the dress home with her.  I assumed she would have it cleaned and boxed up, especially since it was thirty years old at that point.  I assumed wrong.  The dress was hung in a closet as is.  When I found it many years later, it was dangling from the hanger like a weary spider web.  The lace had disintegrated wherever it had come in contact with makeup or lotion or deodorant.  It no longer had armpits.

I rushed the decaying carcass of a gown to the nearest dry cleaner who did his best to clean it, stuff it, and fold it gently into one of those giant wedding gown boxes.  I put the giant wedding gown box in the back of my closet.  

Periodically, usually when in the middle of a marathon closet cleaning session, I'd open the box and peer at what was left of my dress.  It did not take me to a happy place.  In fact, each time I looked at it, it seemed a little more lifeless, until eventually I felt like I was protecting a corpse.  Time to make a decision.  It had to go.

I spread the gown out on the floor.  I looked for the sections that remained unscathed from the ravages of time.  I grabbed my scissors. And I began to cut.  I cut out one small square for Emily.  And one small square for Claire.  And one small square for me.  I included part of the bodice to which we'd added some tiny pearl beads.  The three pieces were carefully folded, slipped inside a carved wooden box, and then placed in a bookshelf next to my bed.

I can honestly say that those three pieces of lace, tucked inside that wooden box, gave me far greater pleasure than the decayed stuffed remains lurking inside the giant wedding gown box.  

There was the lesson.  In trying to do what I thought a good daughter/granddaughter was supposed to do, I was dutifully clinging to something that actually made me sad and resentful.  It wasn't easy making that first cut.  I kept saying to myself, "Who does this?  Who cuts up their mother's wedding gown sewn by their grandmother?"  But as I carefully chose the good bits of lace and trimmed away the bad, I felt more and more confident that I was doing the right thing.  My three small squares of perfect lace gradually buried the memory of rotted lace. 

In deconstructing the dress, I found its real beauty.  The beauty (of course!) was in the idea.  The idea of love that precipitated it, that planned it, that created it, that wore it down the aisle.  And that love could never in a million years decay or disintegrate.  

I had traded my giant wedding gown box of gloom for a carved wooden box filled with freedom, joy, and love.  It was a good trade.  And we had a lot more space in our closet.