The 40licious Bride: Part V

I see a pattern here, and apologies to those of you who are completely uninterested in reading about our upcoming nuptials. There's just so much I am noticing since I took so long to get here!

Today I shopped for the undergarments that will go with my dress. The dress is a strapless tiered number in a mermaid silhouette made of taffeta, and the worst wardrobe calamity I can imagine is akin to my 10th grade homecoming outfit that mostly involved my hiking up the top the whole time. I can't tell you even who I went with. But that was about the last time I went strapless.

So I'm in Macy's and paying for my bustier and some undies and the total came to $66.66. The clerk looked at me in horror. "Do you want to add something to change the price? You don't want bad luck for your wedding," she said.
"No thanks," I said, "It's four digits, not three, it should be fine."
She paused a moment and punched some numbers into the register.
"I took $1 off. It's $65.56 now. Have a beautiful wedding."

Even people I don't know are looking out for me, and that is exactly the magic of being engaged.

The 40licious Bride: Part IV

 

 

By the time you get to 40licious, you like things a certain way. Personally, I have to art direct everything and that includes my wardrobe. ESPECIALLY my bridal wardrobe.

 

Saturday, we went to Steve's parents' and his mom, Ellen, meticulously stitched the edging on my veil. We sat around and chatted about this and that, broke for dinner, then sat around some more and she was done. We were about a foot short of trim, which gives me a reason to go back and adore her some more. I sneaked some really beautiful pictures of her deep into the work but she's camera shy so I won't post them.

But I also have in my mind a dramatic cage veil for the reception. Looking online, I blanched at the prices -- $240 and up for a piece of French netting with a dumb big flower on it. So I ordered my own piece of French netting ($9) and bought my own dumb big flower ($8) and put it together, and tacked on a $1.49 comb from Joann fabric store. Slapped it all together as Ellen diligently did her fine work on my other veil for the ceremony. Voila!

I thought I was being DIY to save money, but I realize that foremost, I'm being DIY to make it OURS. 

The 40licious Bride: Part III

There's a blog I've been following lately, from a woman who has gone back to the UK, Ireland, I think, to deal with her dad's estate. She's still raw and so so sad. She's trying to figure out who she is now and what she's supposed to DO.

Those days for me were a haze. I remember taking so long to clean out his house. I'd go and bring friends to help and paint and we'd bring more stuff to goodwill and paint more and call the exterminator for the mice and bats that had taken residence. A contractor pulled the awful old shag rugs and left the floors bare, I think. The rest of the floors he took down to reveal the resplendent oak below. The next thing I knew, six months had passed. We sold the house at a pathetically low price.

I moved. I communed with my dad in dreams, often. Still do but not as much. Mostly, we are eating dinner and I am asking him if he is OK and where he is. I used to always be confused in the dream, knowing that he'd died but then he's right here before me.

I reserved a bit of his ashes in a cigar tin that sits in the feng shui helpful people corner of my living room. The ashes mean less and less as time goes on. He's not there. That's not him.

Holly, his partner of many years, my "bonus mother," has some of him buried in the yard of the home and vineyard she shares with her new husband. That's where we're getting married.

I guess I waited too long to have my dad dance with me at my wedding, walk me down an aisle, give my husband a hard time about taking care of me. He would love this, all the merging of the tribes, meeting Steve's family, seeing the cousins and friends that were originally his and that I inherited.

But parts of him are next to his cat, which Holly also buried somewhere out there. I like to think that the strong gravitational pull from 100 of his friends and family all concentrated in one place will make him come want to check it out, from wherever he is, and maybe stay for the champagne toast.

I don't know when I went from being A Person Without a Dad to being just A Person again. But hoping that woman in the UK gets there with as much grace as possible.