Surveying the marketplace, or: a blog about wedding dresses

Fran Magazine: Issue #146

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Research and development

As I’ve mentioned previously, Phil and I are getting married later this year, which is yay. If you’d asked me five years ago if I would ever get married, I would have told you: probably not. I have no distaste for the institution and find much about marriage completely romantic, but it was never something I saw or anticipated for myself. I didn’t have any fantasy of “being a bride” growing up. I approached the weddings I went to with curiosity, mostly wondering how everyone pulls everything off. Seems hard! Now that I am doing it myself, I mostly think, “This takes up a lot of time!”

I am learning that choosing to have a wedding is mostly involves making a series of decisions — despite being a Libra rising, I love to make a decision — one of which includes what to wear.

I am not opposed to wearing white, which I understand carries some burden of virginity or purity or Christianity or whatever. I think wearing white only means those things if you believe those things, and I don’t believe in any of them, at least as far as it pertains to my own experiences. The idea of white is attractive, in part, because I think white — and its myriad variations, e.g. eggshell, ecru, even champagne — has a kind of exotic appeal. This is simply not a color I am wearing particularly often for fear of spilling on myself.

Because we don’t have the money or interest in having a decadent wedding, wearing a wedding gown feels like it would be pretty absurd, but that has not stopped me from dedicating a few hours a week to perusing brands and options in that general realm of dress. What’s the state of the “wedding dress” right now? This is something I only began to consider very recently. The answer, unfortunately, is: completely insane.

On various bridal Reddit threads, a number of once-fiancées encourage each other to know what they want before they start shopping. This is good advice for any kind of shopping — including groceries. At this point, I only really know what I don’t want, and what I don’t want is most everything I am seeing. The trends right now lean over-embellished: lace AND pearls AND sleeves AND slit AND two pieces AND silk AND train. This is absurd. Some of these gowns have a big old belt too? Everything has too much going on and/or is slutty. You’ll have to believe me when I say that I often love when something can be described as “busy,” and I love “being slutty”¹ but neither of these options feel especially apt, which is unfortunate because they are the main options.