the dress

Recently, I realised that although this is a blog all about my ramblings in clothing, I never talked about one fairly significant item in my wardrobe - my wedding dress.

I got married in July 2020, smack in what we hoped was the middle of the pandemic, thinking it might be over by the end of the year (reader, we were fools). 

After my husband and I set the date earlier that year, I started obsessing over what to wear. I even bought a dress one evening after too many glasses of wine - a Lee Mathews dress, but when it arrived, I felt regret - it was nice but forgettable, rather expensive for what it was, and I already had dresses I liked just as much, if not more, so why bother? I sold it and tried to pretend I never wanted a new dress in the first place.

Time passed. I continued to be tempted by many a dress, including several Mara Hoffman dresses like this one and this one. For the most part, I didn't want a new dress, but somehow I kept circling back, thinking, it's a wedding! I get to make a statement! I want to splurge! I wanted to look back on what I wore and feel...something.

What that "something"might be, I wasn't sure. I did have some idea of how I wanted to feel on the day of: I wanted it to be a dress , I wanted to feel unencumbered, I wanted to feel pretty, I wanted to wear one thing that belonged to my mother.

And I didn't want to look at the photos and think, "Who's that?" 

Reviewing the dresses that tempted me, I also realised I didn't want to wear white. I wasn't against the idea, but I wasn't wedded to the idea either. 

One day, I went to my closet, and flipped through my dresses again (there was a lot of time for this since I was working from home). And there it was. A plain navy blue dress, an old guilty impulse buy from COS. It had two layers - the top was sheer and long, A-line, tiered below the hip so it billowed gently to my ankles; underneath was a plain slip. The fabric was lightly textured and shimmered faintly, suggesting festivities. The subtle volume made things interesting even when I was merely standing still. 

I remember how I felt when I bought the dress - it was on sale and I needed a mood lift; after buying it I immediately kicked myself for succumbing to fast fashion. I wore it once to a party and felt better - it's a great party dress. But the mood passed. 

Choosing it as my wedding dress has redeemed it some. It is there, in all my photos, dancing around me as we walked to a little function room at National Museum for a socially distanced ceremony. It will always mean something. It has a story now.

What else is part of this story? The matching masks in a Liberty floral for me and my husband - I still wear those once a week. A jade pendant, a gift from my aunt who fulfilled my mother's long-cherished dream of buying her daughters a piece of jade when they got married. My mother's watch. A pair of low-heeled suede sandals with little bows (adorable, comfortable, never worn since, but bought on sale so the expense wasn't so bad). My wedding band bought a week before the ceremony, when the lockdown ended and shops reopened. A bouquet of dried flowers which I still have, sitting in a vase in my living room. 

One of my sisters took photos. We were yelled at by security guards who insisted we could not linger on the premises. My father smiled the whole time. We went back to my apartment, where we had pre-ordered lunch from a Peranakan restaurant we thought would have made a nice wedding venue. A wedding party of six, plus my sisters' dogs. Lots of wine. A lemon tart for my wedding cake, my mother's favourite. 

I see the dress all the time, hanging in my closet with all my other dresses. I haven't worn it since, because it hasn't really been a party year, has it? But I don't mind. It's a hardy dress, made with just enough of the synthetics we despise to outlast me. It isn't white so I don't worry about it yellowing. When the right day comes, I will wear it, and tell my story.