I pretty much hate dresses and try never to wear them.
Maybe that’s why my sister Rebecca was so astonished when I asked if I could join her on her little wedding dress shopping expedition.
“What?” she said. “Do you really want to go?”
“Why wouldn’t I want to go?” I asked, cagily.
“Because you hate dresses?” she said. “And shopping?”
Rebecca did have a point, but I decided to pretend that she didn’t. My secret fear is that my family is going to leave me out of the wedding planning, thinking they’re doing me some kind of favor, since it involves stuff I hate. But what I really want is to be included in everything, even the stuff that I hate, and I hoped my newfound interest in dress shopping would serve as a convincing demonstration of my desire to be involved. Certainly, it took people by surprise.
“You’re doing what?” my friend Heather said. “You’re going dress shopping? I can’t believe you’re doing that. Why are you doing that?”
“To show how much I care,” I explained.
“You’re going to hate it,” she said.
“I know,” I said. “But it will show everyone how much I care.”
I arranged to meet Rebecca and our mother at a dress shop in Portland, Maine, at 3 p.m. last Friday. She called me while I was on the road, and asked when I would be arriving. “12:30,” I said. “You should meet us at the mall,” she said. “I have an earlier appointment at a David’s Bridal there.” “I don’t think so,” I said. “I want to eat lunch.” Rebecca sighed. “OK,” she said. “I’ll see you at 3.”
I grew up wearing dresses and skirts on a somewhat regular basis, because my parents made me wear them to church, and we went every week. As a child, I tried to engage my parents in theological debates about fancy clothes — if God loves us just the way we are, why do we have to look nice for church? I would ask — but they responded by rolling their eyes, and saying things like, “You can change when you get home,” and “It’s only a couple hours.”
Like many things — my hatred of onions, or my hatred of math — my parents probably expected me to outgrow my hatred of dresses.
But I haven’t.
Indeed, my high school yearbook quote — “I’d chew my foot off to get out of this dress,” from the song “Sad Dress,” by the alternative rock band Belly — still pretty much sums up my feelings for dresses. I think they’re uncomfortable, and I’d rather wear something else.
At the same time, I understand that I have to wear a dress to my sister’s wedding. “What are you going to wear?” people keep asking me, as if they expect me to show up in old jeans and a T-shirt. But I understand a few things about how the world works, and I know that I’m supposed to wear something nice — not because it will make me happy, but because it will make other people happy.
I had a similar attitude at my college graduation. Caps and robes were optional; people could wear whatever they wanted. And although some people wore regular clothes, I decided that the least I could do to thank my parents for putting me through college was wear a nice dress. (As for a cap and gown, forget it.)
Shortly before 3 p.m. last Friday, I arrived at the dress shop in Portland, called Eco-Elegance because it sells both new and pre-owned wedding dresses.
“Good thing you didn’t come to David’s Bridal,” my sister said. “It was really crowded.”
“We were stacked together like cattle,” my mother concurred.
In contrast, Eco-Elegance was quiet and calm. We were the only customers, and the proprietor escorted us to a spacious changing area after selecting five or six dresses from the racks. Since I didn’t have to try any of them on, I was able to relax, although at one point my mother and my sister tried to get me to look for a dress for myself. “Can’t I do that later?” I asked.
I settled into a comfortable divan, and tried to offer useful feedback, like: “That one looks nice. The lace is pretty.” Or: “I kind of prefer the asymmetrical lace pattern.” Or: “The strapless dress is elegant, but the train is a little too long and fluffy.”
The trip to Eco-Elegance was wildly successful. Rebecca selected a dress, which enabled us to cancel a Sunday dress appointment in Portsmouth, N.H. This made me happy, because it meant I could do other things on Sunday, things that are way more fun than dress shopping, like sitting around the house and reading, and meeting a friend for lunch.
Truth be told, my hatred for dresses has diminished in recent years.
I first realized this while attending my friend Hanna’s wedding in LaCrosse, Wis. I stayed with six friends from college in a bed-and-breakfast, and we spent the day-and-a-half preceding the wedding walking along the Mississippi River, playing poker on a riverboat and dining at a local brewery. A couple hours before the ceremony, we returned to our bed-and-breakfast to shower and change into our fancy clothes.
We’d certainly never looked this nice in college, and we stood there for a few minutes, blinking at each other.
“We clean up pretty well,” my friend Susanna observed.
It was true. We really did. And for the short time that we wore those fancy clothes, we really had a very good time. Better, I think, than if we’d donned the old jeans and T-shirts we would have worn on any other day, when nothing special was happening.
Foss Forward makes a weekly appearance in print, in The Gazette’s Saturday Lifestyles section. You can email Sara at sfoss@dailygazette.net.
