The Neighbor laid her wedding dress out on the sofa the other night. It has been a decade since her divorce went through.
Our original plan involved painting portions of my house attired in our wedding dresses, but let me tell you, lace, ladders and paint cans are a problem. We then decided to dispose of our wedding dresses in tandem, one dress could keep the other company.
But I spoiled that plot when I secreted my dress in her garbage can and didn’t tell her until after collection.
So there lay her wedding gown, resplendent. An acre of duchesse satin, chiffon and lace. Two dimensional, it appeared to be waiting – beautiful – for another moment. Another moment.
I was stopped. Bemusement gave way to sober wonder. Even devoid of its inhabitant, a wedding dress has the power to still. The dress contained nothing, but its hold was palpable.
Any woman can only wear a true wedding dress once. While she may marry again, there is only one dress that will carry her from her original unmarried state to the condition thereafter.
What space does that dress traverse? Girl to woman is trite, from father to husband is demonic, unmarried to married is not quite right. It has more to do with personal to collective, a ritual whereby individual is joined to a greater story– a bigger river–for better, or for worse.
Great minds plumb the anthropological and sociological symbolism of wedding apparel, I need not go there.
The dress before me once carried anticipation and plans, inarticulable future images. First brides are radiant because they are in transition, grown out of a life, walking into another. Heads turn, and so they should.
A woman’s initiatory trip to the altar surrenders her passing life and sacrifices present, sometimes future, hopes unbeknownst. A fate-full moment not understood until long passed. The moment, the dress, can never be repeated.
The Neighbor’s dress is bound for Goodwill. Her dress has an unseen fullness, perhaps it is potential, that mine did not, at least not that I remember. It is good our dresses had divergent paths. With alteration, the Neighbor’s dress could walk another aisle, carry another woman from there to here.
Shouldn't...but Do 
Thanks, Neighbor ~ You captured our moment beautifully.
The older I get the more archaic and artificial the traditional wedding ceremony seems. Thousands of dollars spent buying clothes you’ll never wear again and paying too much for bland, overcooked food, cheap wine, and canned music. If there’s a church service involved, and readings about how a woman shall leave her home and cleave unto her husband, it’s all I can do not to laugh aloud.
I’m copying my bff Jill and offering my children a bribe if they’ll elope. I’d like it even more if they waited to find out who they wanted to be before they tried to find who they wanted to be with.