A sad farewell

I love, love, love my wedding dress (seen at left in the early morning hours of my wedding day).

Which is why I got rid of it.

Let me back up a bit. When I got engaged, I searched for the perfect dress - at first, it was a half-hearted search, because I knew what style I wanted, and I thought I wanted to buy it in Florida, so it would be close to me for alterations. But when I went home to Ohio the week after we got engaged, my mom and I went dress shopping - mostly for the experience, as she had never been able to shop for a wedding dress (hers was loaned to her, and my sister was also living away from home and shopped by herself), and I never had, either, and thought it would be a good experience to share.

Little did I know that I'd end up buying the first dress I tried on. It was almost identical to the dress I had torn out of a magazine and brought to the small boutique near where I grew up. And it was the perfect size and on sale. I loved it, I loved the way I looked in it ... and I really couldn't imagine finding anything more perfect. (If you know anything about how hard it is for me to shop for jeans or shoes, you'll know why I dreaded shopping for a wedding dress, thinking it would be a similar experience.)

I tried on a few other dresses at that boutique. We even went to another store and I tried on some dresses there, but I was getting cranky and knew deep-down that I'd found *my* dress. I flew back to Florida a day later and decided that I wanted THAT dress. My mom and dad had offered to buy my wedding dress, so my mom called the store and told them I wanted it.

So the dress shopping I didn't expect to result in a purchased dress had fulfilled my dreams and expectations. For the next eight months or so, the dress stayed in the boutique, untouched.

Then I flew home for my bridal shower and had two fittings, and then the dress sat idle again until the week before the wedding, when I had my final fitting and took my dress to Columbus with me.

A photo from my first dress fitting - reunited with my dress!

On the day of our wedding, I wore the dress with pride and love ... it fit well, I still loved it, and it was mine.


And then we went to Dave and Buster's for an after-party, and I wore the dress there, too.

Nothing says "Bride" like shooting hoops in your wedding dress.

For about a year, my dress hung in my sister's spare room (hey, I didn't even have to pay a storage fee!). As our first anniversary approached, I asked if she would mail it to me for our Trash the Dress session.


Months before the Trash the Dress session, I had decided I wanted to donate my dress, so I was really glad I got to wear my dress again and get some photos taken in Florida. I didn't trash my dress by any means, and it hadn't suffered any horrendous wine spills or rips and tears, so it is still in extremely good condition. I had heard a lot about Brides Against Breast Cancer, and since I am a bride against breast cancer, I knew this was the organization for my dress.

Here's an excerpt from the Web site about the dress donations and sales:

"Brides Against Breast Cancer" gown sales continue to be important fund-raising events for Making Memories. Our more than 32 yearly shows provide brides-to-be with an opportunity to find their dream gown (at an incredible savings) while making wishes and dreams come true for women and men who are losing their fight against breast cancer.

The worldwide support of designers, manufacturers, bridal shops and individuals (who donate a most treasured possession) make possible our Nationwide Tour of Gowns sales. The proceeds from these events help bring a moment of joy into world of someone for whom a cure is too late.

I looked in to what I would need to do to donate my dress - currently they accept styles from 2006 to the present, and they request a $40 donation to cover cleaning the gown. You can mail it to the organization or drop it off at a local dress sale (they hold one yearly in Tampa), and you just fill out a form - and you're done.

I took several things in to consideration when making the decision to donate my dress, though. And it wasn't an easy decision. But I'm happy with it.

I considered the fact that I could have my dress cleaned and preserved and stored. The $40 donation is a lot cheaper than cleaning and preservation, and right now we're not swimming in storage space. But the biggest factor in all of this is that the dress would sit, unused, unloved and unadmired - and for what reason? I've got photos of me in my dress. I know how much I loved wearing it. Why should the dress sit when it could be enjoyed by someone else? And why should it sit when it could be used to benefit a good cause?

When we found out we were having a baby girl, the dress tugged at my heartstrings again. I had a talk with Tim one night about it, though, and reasoned that even if there was a 1% chance that our daughter wanted to wear my wedding dress someday as her own, was it worth hanging on to when - again - someone else could get enjoyment out of it now? And if it was to benefit breast cancer research and awareness, I would think my daughter would understand why it wasn't available to her and appreciate that.

I considered some other popular options - we could have the dress altered in to a Christening gown. But my family has a Christening gown, one that has been passed down ... and down ... and down. We don't need one.

I kept coming back to my bottom line: Someone else could get as much enjoyment out of this dress as I did, and for a good cause.

This year, I won't be able to run in the Race for the Cure. It will be the first race I've missed in six years. And to make up for that, I think donating my dress now is a good alternative. So since I finally had the money for shipping, the donation *and* a box to fit the dress at the same time (usually I was missing at least one of the three), I packed up the dress, took it to UPS and mailed it off to the BABC headquarters.

As I packaged the dress, I asked Tim if he wanted to say goodbye or if he would miss it. He said it had served its purpose of being there on our wedding day and was ready to move on to a new home. *sniff* The UPS clerk asked me about the charity and said he thought it sounded like a great thing to do, which made me feel good about my decision in my moment of emotional dress abandonment.

I'll miss the dress, and I'm sure I'll sometimes wonder if I did the right thing or where the dress ended up, but deep down, I am happy with the choice to spread the love that my dress brought to me and enable the proceeds of that sale to bring joy to someone else.

Trash the Dress session

This blog has been allll baby lately. But at least I've been blogging!

I have a few things from the end of last year that I want to blog about, and this is one of them.

As I planned our wedding, I LOVED looking at wedding photos. I would look at the Web sites of wedding photographers, flip through magazine after magazine and look at photos from other brides. Since we got married in Ohio, I knew we wouldn't have any beach photos, and since we got married on a rainy November morning, there wasn't even any real chance for any outside photos. (And we won't even go in to how awful our actual photographer was ...)

Anyway. After looking all of the sites and photos, I started to think about doing a Trash the Dress session. Some brides and photographers take this term very seriously and take photos in burned out buildings, fields of mud or repairing cars. I didn't want to *trash* my dress, though - I wanted to celebrate it and wear it one more time. I also wanted to get photos in an environment that has been such a big part of our engaged and married lives: Florida.

About a year and a half ago, I was introduced to Christine by mutual friends (like loyal blog readers Stef and Julia and Todd). Around the time I started my business last year, she was laid off from her full-time job as a newspaper photographer. Rather than try to get a job with another newspaper, she decided to pour her heart and soul in to building the photography business she had been running on the side. She asked me to design some flyers for her, and it was one of the first paid jobs I had. During our talks about what images and wording should go on the flyers, I shared my dreams of doing a Trash the Dress session. Since Christine a) is awesome and b) was looking to add to her portfolio, she said she'd love to shoot our session.

I kind of wanted to do the shoot around our anniversary and after our trip to Ohio. We arranged the schedules of Tim, Christine and I to meet at St. Pete Beach (where we got engaged, so it was a special location for us) in early December. Little did I know that days before we did the shoot we'd find out that we'd have another person joining us for the session (and I was dealing with just the beginning of the nausea).

It was cloudy and cool and very windy, but it also had a cool vibe and we figured since it rained on our wedding day, the cloudy atmosphere echoed our big day. We got some funny looks, a lot of smiles and had a blast. Tim was a great sport, despite finding out on our way there that he had to work for a few hours that night (and the beach is about an hour from where we live). When we got home, I let my dress dry - it was really only wet on the bottom and on some of the inner layers - and shook the sand off a few days later. You would never know it was in the Gulf of Mexico :)

Here are just a few of my favorites from the day: