Bridal Preparations

Don't be fooled by the title of this post - no one here, in my family, is getting married or remarried anytime soon.

But this morning while reading my favorite blogs, Empress Bee of the High Seas, was discussing briefly the preparations going on now for her granddaughter, Lala's wedding this spring. One of the things on her list of "to do" stuff was that she now has to go shopping for a suitable dress for the Grandmother of the Bride to wear at that affair. And that gave my memory a bit of a jog back in time -oh about 11 years ago this past month- when my older daughter was planning her wedding.

At that time in my life, I was working two jobs - just barely covering the absolute basic necessities of my expenses and I was worrying about how I was going to be able to afford to take off not just one night, but two nights from work for openers - one, to attend the wedding rehearsal and the other, of course, to attend the wedding. And then, on top of that, I had to shop, very carefully, for an outfit to wear to the event as well.

For a good many years now, shopping for anything new in my wardrobe - other than oversized tee shirts with either a Penn State logo thing on them or perhaps some obnoxious saying -has not been a pleasant experience for me. Weight gain that made then - still does except is worse now-finding anything that fits and doesn't make me look and feel like a stuffed sausage, is something next to impossible and, has been for a long time. Add to that the challenge of finding something for an occasion as auspicious as the wedding of one's daughter that would be at all affordable on my really meager budget then and might even have potential of being worn more than one time (so that it would work with my Scottish ancestry of items serving more than one purpose, ya know), I figured I was going to be dealing with an impossible search mission.

Much to my surprise though, I found an outfit I felt would be very appropriate. Found this item at a J.C. Penney's store in our vicinity and to my real pleasure, it was on sale and not only that, it would be an addition to my wardrobe that I could wear to church, for work in an office setting if I ever managed to land a "professional" job, utilizing my degree, etc. Yes, it was an outfit I was quite pleased with.

It consisted of two pieces - a navy skirt and a blazer in a navy/light blue/mauve/violet paisley print (blazer type) with a "dickey" inset that buttoned in making it look as if it were actually a three piece set. The price was, for an ensemble like this, very reasonable as it was on sale for a mere $25.00! I was, needless to say, ecstatic over my find.

I was very excited as I called my daughter to tell her of my find. She was semi-approving as I described the colors and that it was of a "suit" type nature, which was acceptable to her. Then she said it sounded find but that "It better not be showing any cleavage!" And yes, she was quite adamant about that point too! This is the daughter who tended then to wear clothing along the "classical" lines of apparel -chic and stylish, but very office-dressy if you follow my drift there. (Today, the same can't always be said for her as she has in the past couple of years discovered some "water bra" that I believe Victoria's Secret makes and she makes no bones about telling darned near everyone she knows about these fantastic bras and the rounded curves they give, yadda, yadda.)

I told her I was quite sure this outfit would be acceptable to her and she kept asking me over and over though about how much cleavage did it show.

About a week or two later, there came a day when she and her future mother-in-law and my younger daughter and I would all be able to meet up at a very nice restaurant in State College (The Tavern, if anyone reading this is familiar with Penn State and State College) for supper. For having working both Christmas and New Year's shifts at my one job, I had been given two gift certificates for dinner at the Tavern, so older daughter decided that this would be a good time for me to make use of them, meet her soon-to-be mother-in-law, get acquainted, etc., and also, for me to bring the outfit I had purchased over with me so she could look at it and hopefully, give it her stamp of approval.

We met in the little entryway to The Tavern and the first thing daughter did was snatch the bag containing my outfit in it from me and yanks it out of the bag to inspect the jacket. She looked it over closely - the colors were fine, the paisley and the colors in it would really look excellent she felt since her attendants would be wearing gowns of a deep violet/purple shade so the paisley print would look like it had been coordinated to their colors.

And thankfully too, when she saw how the white piece fit in the front - that little button-in dickey - she realized it would definitely hide the cleavage problem completely.

I doubt Bee's granddaughter will put her through hoops like that though when she goes shopping for her "Grandmother of the Bride's dress!

Oh, and in case you're wondering, that outfit did see several years of usage -until unfortunately, I outgrew it.