The dress crisis (2/3)

Wedding day. I wake up from my alarm at 8:30 and turn over, wishing I could go back to sleep. But there’s lots to do today. Manicures, eat lunch, hair make-up get dressed, pictures. We are on a tight schedule. Since the dorm car was parked and undrivable, my brother was driving back and forth all day picking up, dropping off. (My brother who is 17 and only has a permit. Who scraped someone’s car and caused my mother a lot of anxiety since he was the only one driving which is illegal.)

After manicure and pedicure I am running late. I keep getting phone calls while my nails are still wet and of course I can’t answer them. Someone comes to pick me up. I have to run to the apartment where I was staying to pick up my dress and shoes and anything else I will need. I’m starving since I missed lunch. My sister grabs me a bagel.

We get to the hall. The make-up lady starts on my sister first while I get my hair done. We can’t decide what to do. Up, down, half up, half down. The lady doing my hair tells me to try on my dress to see which hairstyle will look good with it. I ask my sister to zip me up. The zipper gets stuck at one point and won’t go up the whole way. Three people give it a try and suddenly the zipper breaks. This is great.

For some reason, last week I was freaking out about the dress I bought for the wedding. It was green when all my other sisters and my mother found purple. Which was fine with me. But it was sleeveless, and for some reason I thought a long sleeve lace shirt would look good with it. After buying my own material and deciding against making a shirt, I found one online for… $50. I bought it and it came. I tried it on with the dress.

It looked horrible. The lace was all wrong with the material. There’s no way to describe it besides that I was panicking. Not knowing what to do but knowing I was desperate, I ran to the mall, tried on a few dresses and bought one. Here’s the funny part- it was purple.

I called my mother to tell her the whole story and she convinced me that I was just nervous, that she would buy a plain cream colored shirt and it would look good with the green dress, that I should keep the purple one just in case but not wear it. I already got the green one hemmed, didn’t seem nice to waste it after all that effort.

So I brought the purple one with me just in case. It was my ‘back-up dress’. And I ended up wearing it.

My brother came to pick me up. I had to run to Kingston to buy a black shirt to go underneath the purple dress since I hadn’t foreseen needing one. I’m in a jean skirt and sweater, my make-up is professionally done, (and gorgeous), my hair is half done. I cannot imagine what people thought. All I kept thinking was, wedding crisis.

I ran to get my purple dress from the apartment, ran back to the hall, tried it on, and everyone agreed it looked perfect, I would fit right in with my family, it was hashgacha pratis that I bought it and brought it with me. So I finished getting my hair done and all was well.

The wedding was great. My brother was his usual unusual self. He wore a kappatah but with a vest underneath it and he made it look like a morning coat worn by British men long ago. He wore a flower on the lapel. And his signature top hat.

The kallah was gorgeous. I cried a little after the chuppah when it hit me that he was married. It was a fun wedding, and the best part was when my mother came out with 60 plastic top hats and gave them out to the guys to wear while dancing.

Oh and we played ‘pass the niece around’. My one and only gorgeous niece who is ka’’h one years old.

My aunt was there, and my mom’s best friends since she was 6 came with her daughter. We all had a really nice time.

So that was the story of the dress crisis. Part 3 coming soon.