The Dress Issue No 1
"What is that?" yelped my mother, banging her glass of cheap fizzy wine down on a pedestal at her side.I turned the red and gold bolero jacket, with high brocade collar and short sleeves, round and around for her to marvel at.
It was 4pm on a Saturday in 2005 and we had been scouring the city for my wedding dress since 1998. Or at least, it felt that way.
We looked at the woman in the shop and our crimson faces, coloured from containing bellows of laughter (and mine from trying to hold in stomach muscles at the same time), displayed that the bolero jacket suggestion may not have been the right one.
"Jut try it on?" she pleaded. "You really never know whether something will suit you until you try, you'd be surprised at the number ... "
Unfortunately, this petite, tidy woman with the perfect French bun, didn't finish her sentence as she was faced with two considerably bigger and more dishevelled women who had already drunk most of the booze in her fridge and were looking dangerously like they fancied a bit of a fight.
I put on the jacket, which, like everything else in the store, was at least a size too small, and turned to look at her, hand on hip.
It was the final straw in what had been quite a wearisome day. I mean isn't anyone in Bristol born with big boobs and gropeable bums?
Can everyone really be a size 10? - and with not very good taste, I might (bitterly) add. When this was pointed out to the assistant in question - who at one stage had asked how much weight I was going to lose for the wedding - it was enough for her to take the rest of her suggestions back to the store room to find a suitable alternative.
I had an image of her rummaging in a box at the back of the store marked: "Emergency Only" before producing a tent of peach organza and pale blue lace.
As soon as she disappeared my mum and I looked at each other, unable to control our mirth. Neither of us having been born to be quiet, my mother's Edinburgh accent bellowed through the shop: "Darling, I think I'd rather put my head in a barrel of rats than let you wear anything in here!" before sweeping my half-dressed form outside and into the nearest bar.
I'm not in the business of putting myself down, but actually, after the humour and the alcohol wore off, it was quite difficult trying to not feel like a hippo stomping through a world of gazelles.
I don't know if I can go through it again. Without the support of mummy hippo, who was visiting from her home in France, I really think I'd be lost. Maybe I should please go on a diet, lose two stone and go down two dress sizes, but I can't help but feel a bit pathetic if I do that. I mean, I may not be a perfect 10, but it's not as if I'm an ALIEN.
David, as ever, was fabulous. "She's a stupid cow, don't even think about it," he said holding me in his arms that evening in bed as I asked if I'd lose weight by crying a lot.
"She was probably jealous of you because you're so beautiful." And, there we are. Problem solved. This is why I'm getting married - to spend the rest of my life with my gorgeous boyfriend. Not to conspire in some plot against womankind aimed at making us schizophrenic androids, worried about every blotch and bump on our already perfect bodies.
Maybe I'm looking down the lens the wrong way. But all things considered, I've decided I'm designing my dress myself and that's that. Now all I have to do is find a dressmaker who drinks proper Champagne and actually likes women.
I mean, it can't be that difficult .... can it?
posted by Sadie Kenshall @ 7:46 PM
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