We just need to say thanks, we never knew what you looked like or if you were even a real person.
We thought we looked beautiful and ‘grownup’ in those strapless Aline frocks, and miraculously, our mothers agreed.
They have been sweet, simple, attractive dresses, ones that we and our moms could both agree on. No zebra print or cutouts or questionably placed sequins these were classic dresses that showed off our shape, as our mothers will say when we waltzed out of the department store dressing room. It’s no small feat to find common ground between a teenage girl and her mother. Besides, you, Jessica McClintock, accomplished the impossible. With her ever expanding hips and chest and her gawky arrangements of limbs, many of us know that there is no more self conscious creature than a teenage girl. Nonetheless, we felt safe and secure in all that sturdy satin, feminine in those layers of tulle and beautiful with our shoulders exposed like ‘grownup’ women. You made us happy with our bodies. Then again, thence you did more than that. Besides, your body skimming frocks, cinched in at the waist with helpful boning in the bodice to remind us to stand up straight, worked with our changing bodies, not against them. She also was one of eight children who grew up in modest circumstances, her mother a homemaker and her father a traveling salesman.
Did you know that the children ranged in age from six to early 20s, when her parents every died early. They banded together, the older ones preparing to work to raise the youngest ones. As for calling the mechanics back to work so the couple’s plans shouldn’t be interrupted, and makes one wish we could go back in time. Certainly, nothing quite like what your story tells, I’m quite sure I can remember a time when a bride’s gown was described in the newspaper write up. I read on about the tall white candles, vases of Easter lilies and white snapdragons that adorned the altar and the sophisticated selection of music chosen by Dad, a violinist himself. Now regarding the aforementioned fact… Real pleasure lay in the description of her dress. Then the gown was a light froth of filmy fabric with stitches so tiny I could hardly see them without a magnifying glass. Have you heard of something like that before? Even ultimately these years, the dress, though aged, looked lovely. Basically, to see the dress in reality after reading this lyrical description was pure pleasure. When I sewed one more crooked dress with a wavy hemline, in the early years of our marriage I promised that I should never sew our daughters’ wedding dresses.
He looked relieved.
It did occur to me that a handsewn wedding gown is a thing of beauty forever, when I looked at that lovely dress.
Know what guys, I know how stressful weddings can be, as the mother of two daughters and survivor of both of their weddings. Probably won’t be anymore, as the kids grow up with higher expectations of everything, in our family, potluck receptions been common. I love anything homemade about a wedding. I made my wedding dress in 1970, white crepe, a slim, floor length, Empire waist with puffy sleeves. It really made for a wonderful memento of the bride’s special day. Carefully describing every little detail, when I was married 61 years ago most newspapers had a Society Editor who wrote about weddings. You should take it into account. Actually the amazing thing to us, her offspring whose lives are consumed with 21st century stress, was that Mom quit her job a week before the wedding to sew both her wedding gown and her sister’s ‘maid of honor’ dress.