This is strange for me to
write, because I will never admit it aloud to anyone no matter the
physical cost, but I am very much like my mother. Not to say this a bad thing. My mother is warm and strong, the
epitome of a Midwestern turned Californian transplant. I am so happy to be her daughter. However, we have definitely had our
moments of conflict. Recently, I
talked to her about it, and she said, “I don’t remember us fighting much.”
“But don’t you remember when I made you so mad you cried?”
“When was that?”
“I was in high school.”
She looked at me as if I was tap dancing in a tutu, which I would never do.
“Really? I don’t remember that.”
I think this proves the strength of my mother’s selective memory. I also recall our yelling battles when I returned home from college for more than two days, when I started coming home most weekends when my now fiancé and I were dating, when I introduced her to my fiancé, up until when we started talking about my wedding.
If it hasn’t been made terribly obvious, I am a youngest child, so this was not my mother’s first wedding rodeo. My sister got married back in 2009, and that was interesting. As the teenaged maid of honor at only 19, I was the go between for my mother and sister. Em had moments where she could not come up with a decision about something like flowers or cake or how many human sacrifices would be necessary, and I would get a call from Mom that looked a little something like this.
Me: “Hi Mom, I was just studying like the great college student I am.”
Mom: “I am so mad at your sister. Your sister can’t seem to decide on the flowers. Do you know what I told your sister? I told your sister to decided and your sister just won’t decide.”
Me: “…Ok?”
Mom: “I need you to talk to your sister. Your sister needs to decide now or we won’t get the flowers in time for your sister’s wedding.”
Me: “Ok I love you buh bye.”
I could tell by the fact that “my daughter” had become “your sister” that Em was in some deep shit. So, being a dutiful daughter and sister, I put myself in the crosshair.
Me: “Hey Em. Mom called.”
Em: “I just don’t care about the flowers! I really don’t care! Why would I care about the flowers, I just don’t get it.”
Me: “Cool. What should I tell mom.”
Em: “Tell her I don’t care!”
So I would relay the message to my mother.
Me: “Hello my beautiful and amazing mother.”
Mom: “She told you she doesn’t care, didn’t she?”
Me: “Yup.”
And with that, Mom would do whatever the hell she wanted. Which in turn, was not what my sister secretly wanted. And so the phone call cycle would continue. The only time I shut this down was finals week. I recall studying for a calculus final and seeing Mom’s number come up on the phone, and I had to shut it down.
(ASIDE: While I was writing this, I was spending some time with my mother. I told her my tale of woe, and she said she couldn’t remember the hard part. She could only remember Em thanking her at the end. She says the same thing about labor.)
This is meant to give you context for the moment I told my parents I was engaged. The engagement itself will stand to be the most amazing moment of my life until perhaps the wedding came along. He proposed on a cliff facing the ocean in Watsonville at sunset on a cloudy day while we were camping with family. There were rabbits and lavender. It was perfect. Telling my mother was less perfect. All of the sudden, from the mist and sparkle of a new engagement came the structure and tension that is planning a wedding. My job is to make constant decisions, or else my world descends into chaos. The idea of making a great number of decisions, many of which affect other people, was not terrifying but anxiety inducing.
Luckily, I had enough friends in college and graduate obsessed with weddings that I had an idea of what I was looking for. I come from the time of Pinterest. I think, in this case, Pinterest saved my life. I knew exactly what sorts of things I was looking for, and I put a major emphasis on family and heritage. My sister’s troubles came from being laissez faire about the whole event, which is not a bad thing and very her. However, when planning big events, it is necessary to give at least two shits about what the food is and what it looks like, and to decide quickly so that prices don’t climb to the point to where you look at your cake and say “You cost the same amount as my house.”
Because of taking on a lot of decision making with my sister’s wedding, my mom had flowers and suchlike on speed dial, so that was that. Theme came pretty easily. Both the boy and I are incredibly, almost to a fault, laid back people. Our idea of a fancy date is one outside of our home. Even home is fancy if we stay in work clothes. My idea of what a wedding is comes very much from how we were raised. A wedding, for us, is saying we are now family. And our family are now family. It’s a family party celebrating family. I love that old phrase of not losing a sister, but gaining a brother, because for us, that’s really true.
I began my love affair with mom’s dress when I was little. My mom was married June 25, 1983, and you wouldn’t know it to the look at the photos. Her dress was so elegantly her. It had a high neckline, with a lace collar just around the throat. The underdress was long and satin and lovely. It had a gorgeous lace overdress with sleeves and these delicate buttons all the way up the back. It was the opposite of an average 80’s wedding dress and I loved it.
After I got engaged, it turned into a family gathering to see me in the dress. I am about the same size my mother was then, with a few differences, and so I could fit into it pretty well. It became special moments for those who were members of the family to see me in it, to make the idea of me getting married real. I think it was the first time I saw my future mother in law cry. Kind of awesome. It was also what I was wearing one of the last times I saw my grandmother, and we were able to include her in the plan.
While the dress was lovely and amazing, it frankly wasn’t my style and the fit was not good enough to walk down the aisle in. They don’t make bras that cut that low, and the backless thing isn’t me. The dress was also too short, story of my life. I think I never will wear a floor length dress unless I make it myself. I am 5’9” when I’m tired, 5’10” when I care. Even in flats, it just wouldn’t look right. Style wise, I fit more on the 40’s-50’s silhouette, with a full skirt to the knees. This was oddly in fashion, but only for upwards of like $4,000 from Nordstroms. That’s not how I generally do. I am cheap as can be.
Around this time, my mom had a resurgence in sewing. She had gone through and made a great deal of clothing for herself, for me and PJs for all the kids for Christmas. We were at the fabric store, and she saw a pattern for a cocktail length dress with a lace overlay. It was kind of a perfect dress in general, and mom asked what I thought. I told her I was a fan. And she bought the pattern saying “Maybe we can do this for your wedding.” If you didn’t know, at that point, I wasn’t engaged. I think the boy and I had just rounded a year, but mom knew something I didn’t know. (Turns out she really actually did know pretty soon after. When he asked for permission.)
This pattern became the basis on which mom sculpted her wedding dress to look like the dress I wanted. Including a petticoat we ordered from ModCloth. (If you have never seen ModCloth, look it up and be prepared to want to throw your money at it.) Mom put all of her blood, sweat and tears into it. She would text me regularly letting me know the progress. The dress was done about a month before the wedding.
The end result was magical. It was sleeveless, lacy and very me. It fit our super easy going vibe that we had at the wedding. I love showing people photos and telling them my mom made my dress from her dress. It was so well done and perfect. What's funny is my mom could only see the errors, and she'll point them out more often than not. But this special thing made an already special day more extraordinary.
“But don’t you remember when I made you so mad you cried?”
“When was that?”
“I was in high school.”
She looked at me as if I was tap dancing in a tutu, which I would never do.
“Really? I don’t remember that.”
I think this proves the strength of my mother’s selective memory. I also recall our yelling battles when I returned home from college for more than two days, when I started coming home most weekends when my now fiancé and I were dating, when I introduced her to my fiancé, up until when we started talking about my wedding.
If it hasn’t been made terribly obvious, I am a youngest child, so this was not my mother’s first wedding rodeo. My sister got married back in 2009, and that was interesting. As the teenaged maid of honor at only 19, I was the go between for my mother and sister. Em had moments where she could not come up with a decision about something like flowers or cake or how many human sacrifices would be necessary, and I would get a call from Mom that looked a little something like this.
Me: “Hi Mom, I was just studying like the great college student I am.”
Mom: “I am so mad at your sister. Your sister can’t seem to decide on the flowers. Do you know what I told your sister? I told your sister to decided and your sister just won’t decide.”
Me: “…Ok?”
Mom: “I need you to talk to your sister. Your sister needs to decide now or we won’t get the flowers in time for your sister’s wedding.”
Me: “Ok I love you buh bye.”
I could tell by the fact that “my daughter” had become “your sister” that Em was in some deep shit. So, being a dutiful daughter and sister, I put myself in the crosshair.
Me: “Hey Em. Mom called.”
Em: “I just don’t care about the flowers! I really don’t care! Why would I care about the flowers, I just don’t get it.”
Me: “Cool. What should I tell mom.”
Em: “Tell her I don’t care!”
So I would relay the message to my mother.
Me: “Hello my beautiful and amazing mother.”
Mom: “She told you she doesn’t care, didn’t she?”
Me: “Yup.”
And with that, Mom would do whatever the hell she wanted. Which in turn, was not what my sister secretly wanted. And so the phone call cycle would continue. The only time I shut this down was finals week. I recall studying for a calculus final and seeing Mom’s number come up on the phone, and I had to shut it down.
(ASIDE: While I was writing this, I was spending some time with my mother. I told her my tale of woe, and she said she couldn’t remember the hard part. She could only remember Em thanking her at the end. She says the same thing about labor.)
This is meant to give you context for the moment I told my parents I was engaged. The engagement itself will stand to be the most amazing moment of my life until perhaps the wedding came along. He proposed on a cliff facing the ocean in Watsonville at sunset on a cloudy day while we were camping with family. There were rabbits and lavender. It was perfect. Telling my mother was less perfect. All of the sudden, from the mist and sparkle of a new engagement came the structure and tension that is planning a wedding. My job is to make constant decisions, or else my world descends into chaos. The idea of making a great number of decisions, many of which affect other people, was not terrifying but anxiety inducing.
Luckily, I had enough friends in college and graduate obsessed with weddings that I had an idea of what I was looking for. I come from the time of Pinterest. I think, in this case, Pinterest saved my life. I knew exactly what sorts of things I was looking for, and I put a major emphasis on family and heritage. My sister’s troubles came from being laissez faire about the whole event, which is not a bad thing and very her. However, when planning big events, it is necessary to give at least two shits about what the food is and what it looks like, and to decide quickly so that prices don’t climb to the point to where you look at your cake and say “You cost the same amount as my house.”
Because of taking on a lot of decision making with my sister’s wedding, my mom had flowers and suchlike on speed dial, so that was that. Theme came pretty easily. Both the boy and I are incredibly, almost to a fault, laid back people. Our idea of a fancy date is one outside of our home. Even home is fancy if we stay in work clothes. My idea of what a wedding is comes very much from how we were raised. A wedding, for us, is saying we are now family. And our family are now family. It’s a family party celebrating family. I love that old phrase of not losing a sister, but gaining a brother, because for us, that’s really true.
I began my love affair with mom’s dress when I was little. My mom was married June 25, 1983, and you wouldn’t know it to the look at the photos. Her dress was so elegantly her. It had a high neckline, with a lace collar just around the throat. The underdress was long and satin and lovely. It had a gorgeous lace overdress with sleeves and these delicate buttons all the way up the back. It was the opposite of an average 80’s wedding dress and I loved it.
After I got engaged, it turned into a family gathering to see me in the dress. I am about the same size my mother was then, with a few differences, and so I could fit into it pretty well. It became special moments for those who were members of the family to see me in it, to make the idea of me getting married real. I think it was the first time I saw my future mother in law cry. Kind of awesome. It was also what I was wearing one of the last times I saw my grandmother, and we were able to include her in the plan.
While the dress was lovely and amazing, it frankly wasn’t my style and the fit was not good enough to walk down the aisle in. They don’t make bras that cut that low, and the backless thing isn’t me. The dress was also too short, story of my life. I think I never will wear a floor length dress unless I make it myself. I am 5’9” when I’m tired, 5’10” when I care. Even in flats, it just wouldn’t look right. Style wise, I fit more on the 40’s-50’s silhouette, with a full skirt to the knees. This was oddly in fashion, but only for upwards of like $4,000 from Nordstroms. That’s not how I generally do. I am cheap as can be.
Around this time, my mom had a resurgence in sewing. She had gone through and made a great deal of clothing for herself, for me and PJs for all the kids for Christmas. We were at the fabric store, and she saw a pattern for a cocktail length dress with a lace overlay. It was kind of a perfect dress in general, and mom asked what I thought. I told her I was a fan. And she bought the pattern saying “Maybe we can do this for your wedding.” If you didn’t know, at that point, I wasn’t engaged. I think the boy and I had just rounded a year, but mom knew something I didn’t know. (Turns out she really actually did know pretty soon after. When he asked for permission.)
This pattern became the basis on which mom sculpted her wedding dress to look like the dress I wanted. Including a petticoat we ordered from ModCloth. (If you have never seen ModCloth, look it up and be prepared to want to throw your money at it.) Mom put all of her blood, sweat and tears into it. She would text me regularly letting me know the progress. The dress was done about a month before the wedding.
The end result was magical. It was sleeveless, lacy and very me. It fit our super easy going vibe that we had at the wedding. I love showing people photos and telling them my mom made my dress from her dress. It was so well done and perfect. What's funny is my mom could only see the errors, and she'll point them out more often than not. But this special thing made an already special day more extraordinary.
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