The wedding dress at
yesterday’s royal wedding was tasteful, lovely and plain. Meghan Markle asked for an unembellished gown
and Clare Waight Keller of Givenchy gave her exactly that. Meghan is a beautiful young woman and a woman
glows in a tasteful, fitted gown. Marketers
of gowns don’t seem to understand marriage is a sacrament. They confuse the wedding ceremony with the
wedding night, confusing sacramental attire and lingerie.
If the bride walks up the aisle and appears to be topless, there is a
problem. We’ve all pitied lovely buxom bridesmaids
constantly adjusting straining, halter, spaghetti straps which won’t stay up on their
backless, frontless cocktail dresses. You
wonder who sold them those dresses. What
were they thinking? Indeed the world has
lost all sense of the sacred seen clearly at the MET Gala recently, “Heavenly
Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination.”
They had bodies and fashion of a sort but the "Catholic Imagination" of
beauty and purity was nowhere to be seen.
Twenty three years ago I wore a wedding dress. It was the most beautiful thing I have ever
worn. As a mature bride, I knew exactly
what I wanted. It was very hard to
find. My Matron of Honor chose a stunning plain
burgundy gown with a matching bolero jacket.
That took a lot of looking. “We’re
the plain girls,” we told an inquiring saleslady over the rhinestone covered
bows. My mother and I went to several
boutiques on the Main Line with no luck.
You would think they might have a few tasteful dresses. However, the styles they carried only differed
from warehouse gowns in price. We were
told by one haughty boutique saleswoman, “we have go-juss dresses.” She showed me dress after dress covered with
rhinestones, bows, lace, and artificial flowers. The dresses had everything but sleeves and a
neckline. I asked if they had anything which
covered the bust and had long sleeves.
She was astonished. I said my
wedding is going to be in a church. She still
didn’t understand why a dress cut down to the waste which evoked "Elvira Mistress
of the Dark" would not be suitable to wear in church. And sleeves?
What kind of a bride wears sleeves?
The haughty saleslady grimaced. I
was hard to please. My mother had an
idea. Why not have a dress made? We had 6 months. So we found a dressmaker and started our
adventure. The seamstress gave us
directives. We found a vintage pattern
with long sleeves, high neckline and a full skirt with a train. Similar to the pattern shown in the photo
with the neckline squared off. We chose
white satin. I was literally the satin
doll. We paid about the same or less for
this tailor made dress as the fancy shops charged
for the topless, plastic encrusted wedding gowns. The only trim were white satin buttons on the
sleeves. I found a full veil in a thrift
shop. I had a dress worthy to wear to receive
the Sacrament of Marriage.
