Friday, July 18, 2008
Let's hear it for the brides
I expect most brides had a similar pang of sympathy as did Glenda Cooper on hearing of the furious women who were left without their wedding dresses by bridal dress shop owner Lisa Clarkson this week.
Glenda is absolutely spot on when she writes: 'Those Georgette Heyer heroines who found themselves socially excluded after having the vulgarity to dance the waltz are not a million miles away from a modern-day bride who might innocently mention that she was thinking of hiring a chocolate fountain for the reception, decides on money rather than a wedding list, or fails to refer to her fiancé as an H2B. With endless pressure to display good taste, is there any surprise many brides go mad?'
With six weeks to go until my own wedding, I look back on my nine-month engagement as a minefield of manners and morals. The problem is that everyone has their own notion of what is polite, yet one is, for once in life, allowed to do whatever you (never mind the groom) want and believe 'it is your day'.
Because you are given carte blanche to build the day up into 'the best day of your life', a huge amount of work goes into preparing a wonderful experience for the guests, and you can become very autocratic and imperious, not to mention stressed. Perhaps the reality is that some guests simply don't realise what a big deal a wedding invitation, or even a wedding itself, is to a bride. Yet people have so many expectations of a bride. To be modest, to be low-key and tasteful, to be polite, and yet to look stunning and have a perfect day.
I feel great sympathy for those brides deprived of their dresses by the shop owner because for many brides the wedding dress is the sign and signal of the whole day - in effect, the dress becomes the wedding, boiled down to one object. The moment of walking down the aisle when all the guests turn to see the bride in THE DRESS and of course the groom also sees THE DRESS for the first time can become the focal point of the day for the bride (perhaps because she believes this is the moment all the guests will make their first and lasting impression of her as a bride), and this causes a lot of excited, selfish expectation.
It's this expectation that has made me spend a small fortune on Estee Lauder make-up and miracle face serums, go to the gym religiously for the last six months, and festishise my dress. Choosing my wedding dress was the most fun I have had in years and I dreamed of lace and satin and embroidery for two weeks solid when I was in the thick of the process. To get my 'dream' dress, I drove a five-hour round trip to a godforsaken town in east Anglia where the very last existing dress I wanted was on sale in the wrong size in a random wedding dress shop. The bizarre thing is that any bride looks beautiful in a wedding dress, and yet to her, it has to be adjusted to fit that one inch tighter, because she wants to look beautiful.
How odd it is that while grooms tend to leave the planning to their fiancees, we brides wake in the night panicking about having enough time to arrange x or y, or whether we have forgotten some tiny detail, or who will stand where in the ceremony and whether all the people around us will support us or whether someone will do something rude and let us down. Planning a wedding, I've discovered such enormous kindness on the part of friends and family, but I've also discovered that weddings don't matter to some people, and that includes members of the wedding industry, like this wedding shop owner, who so evilly left these poor brides without dresses at the last minute. It's typical: brides discover that as soon as they have paid for their £1500 dress, the shop's ingratiating attitude often changes and becomes contemptuous.
We brides need everyone around us to let us be bridezillas for a few weeks, to realise the stress and pressure we are under (as well as the fun we are having being bossy) and allow us to be demanding. In return, the world around us gets a boost in the economy from all the products and services we indulge in, and our guests get a wedding from the bride's heart.
Glenda is absolutely spot on when she writes: 'Those Georgette Heyer heroines who found themselves socially excluded after having the vulgarity to dance the waltz are not a million miles away from a modern-day bride who might innocently mention that she was thinking of hiring a chocolate fountain for the reception, decides on money rather than a wedding list, or fails to refer to her fiancé as an H2B. With endless pressure to display good taste, is there any surprise many brides go mad?'
With six weeks to go until my own wedding, I look back on my nine-month engagement as a minefield of manners and morals. The problem is that everyone has their own notion of what is polite, yet one is, for once in life, allowed to do whatever you (never mind the groom) want and believe 'it is your day'.
Because you are given carte blanche to build the day up into 'the best day of your life', a huge amount of work goes into preparing a wonderful experience for the guests, and you can become very autocratic and imperious, not to mention stressed. Perhaps the reality is that some guests simply don't realise what a big deal a wedding invitation, or even a wedding itself, is to a bride. Yet people have so many expectations of a bride. To be modest, to be low-key and tasteful, to be polite, and yet to look stunning and have a perfect day.
I feel great sympathy for those brides deprived of their dresses by the shop owner because for many brides the wedding dress is the sign and signal of the whole day - in effect, the dress becomes the wedding, boiled down to one object. The moment of walking down the aisle when all the guests turn to see the bride in THE DRESS and of course the groom also sees THE DRESS for the first time can become the focal point of the day for the bride (perhaps because she believes this is the moment all the guests will make their first and lasting impression of her as a bride), and this causes a lot of excited, selfish expectation.
It's this expectation that has made me spend a small fortune on Estee Lauder make-up and miracle face serums, go to the gym religiously for the last six months, and festishise my dress. Choosing my wedding dress was the most fun I have had in years and I dreamed of lace and satin and embroidery for two weeks solid when I was in the thick of the process. To get my 'dream' dress, I drove a five-hour round trip to a godforsaken town in east Anglia where the very last existing dress I wanted was on sale in the wrong size in a random wedding dress shop. The bizarre thing is that any bride looks beautiful in a wedding dress, and yet to her, it has to be adjusted to fit that one inch tighter, because she wants to look beautiful.
How odd it is that while grooms tend to leave the planning to their fiancees, we brides wake in the night panicking about having enough time to arrange x or y, or whether we have forgotten some tiny detail, or who will stand where in the ceremony and whether all the people around us will support us or whether someone will do something rude and let us down. Planning a wedding, I've discovered such enormous kindness on the part of friends and family, but I've also discovered that weddings don't matter to some people, and that includes members of the wedding industry, like this wedding shop owner, who so evilly left these poor brides without dresses at the last minute. It's typical: brides discover that as soon as they have paid for their £1500 dress, the shop's ingratiating attitude often changes and becomes contemptuous.
We brides need everyone around us to let us be bridezillas for a few weeks, to realise the stress and pressure we are under (as well as the fun we are having being bossy) and allow us to be demanding. In return, the world around us gets a boost in the economy from all the products and services we indulge in, and our guests get a wedding from the bride's heart.
# posted by Olivia @ 11:23 am 
