Thursday, June 4, 2009

Wedding Belle Blues

Longtime readers of this blog will remember that I’m not a wedding person. (I’m not dissing anyone else’s choices; just stating my own aesthetic.)

My own wedding took perhaps a few days of planning, most of it devoted to selecting our rings and to figuring out what I would wear.

I believe I’ve written here that I so very much wanted to buy a Chanel navy blue dress, but as I was a second-year graduate student, its $2800 price tag (price point sounds too MBA) was far beyond my means. And since I was a longtime orphan (cue the self-pitying violins), there was no family help.

So I shopped in my closet and wore a great Willi Smith le smoking and was perfectly happy. And then I learned that both my mother and grandmother wore black to their weddings, so I was even carrying on a tradition. I still think about the dress that got away, though.

Enter this month’s Vogue, with its photographs of Sasha and Igor’s wedding reenactment. I’m in thrall to the LV pink dress above and below, worn with an edgy black petticoat. It’s touted as a going-away dress, but I’d wear it to my ceremony with glee. Look, it’s even accessorized with bunny ears.


And, almost eighteen years later, my current wedding dress choice costs a familiar $2800 (sans petticoat).

5 comments:

K.Line said...

Now that's some kinda wedding dress! Love it. I eloped too...

La Belette Rouge said...

I wish that when I got married I had been as smart as you. I could have taken the $3500 and gotten something at Chanel that I could have worn for decades instead of that ridiculous dress that I wore for less than 8 hours.

WendyB said...

Willi Smith! That's a name I haven't thought of in a while. I wore a Richard Tyler gown and later changed into a white leather halter and hiphuggers :-)
Don't regret either of those choices.

Thumbelina Fashionista said...

I have a good number of clothes, bags, and shoes that cost more than my wedding gown. THANK GOD. I'd rather spend my money on something that can be worn again--or at least something that I'd WANT to wear again (nobody wants to rewear a wedding dress).

Anonymous said...

Now that my wedding approaches, I am more than glad I can sew. Not only the bride's stuff is expensive, but the suit for the groom is too. My bf doesn't wear suits normally and since I get to dress up, why should he wear a black monstrosity? So we will save around 6000$ by me sitting at my sewing machine ;-). We will invest some of the money in rings, which will be one of a kind and hand-made. Buying from artisans/designers who make one-of-a-kind stuff is where I really like to spend my money. I still have that 10-year old navy wool dress that goes from business to party and looks simple from afar until you see its innovative dart use, it was a forbidden (for a student) 400$ when I bought it, but it still looks and feels beautiful.