"My dress is sooooooo unique" I saw one bride squee recently of her wedding gown in an online forum. She posted pictures of herself as a stout and earnest girl in a strapless dress with a Cinderella skirt and beaded bodice that looked like it had been trussed somehow. Being a reasonably stout and earnest girl myself, I wanted to take her underwing, introduce her to the beauties of a surpliced torso and flutter sleeves. She wouldn't have heard me.
The responses were infinitly more flattering than the dress. Other brides spoke to the 'uniqueness' of their dresses too until it took a great deal of restraint not to point out that if we're talking white, strapless, big skirt...unless it has a Skittle dispenser toward the end of the train, releasing treats in your signature colors as you sway down the aisle...no.
Cubbies, why now would you imagine that those girls out in Hollywood pay great flaming sacks of cash to employ stylists who shop only for frocks flattering to a client's specific body type, as well as ones that are in keeping with that particular celebrity's 'brand' or the style we have come to expect? More importantly, these personal dress-deciders go at it all with the determination of a double-ought spy to insure that there is not another starlet with even remotely the same dress. Not something derivitive, not something we saw last season, not something that sort of reminds you of Debra Messing's Emmy dress two years ago...something utterly and completely...unique.
Now for all the fuss and hollering that goes on in the circles of the soon-to-be-wed about MY SPECIAL DAY, why is the line around the block of brides and their strapless, white/off white, ballgown dress? And no, that your bodice is embroidered and beaded with your wedding logo does not make your dress unique. Celebs go to any number of formal events every year, each an opportunity to showcase their own personal fabulousness. You get one shot and you pick a dress that hanging in a plastic bag in a dress shop would be virtually indistinguishable from 90% of the dresses in the place. If you really want this to be YOUR DAY and showing off YOUR style and YOUR uniqueness....why are you going to pick the one style of dress that is mass marketed to what looks to me like 98% of the getting married population?
That said, being older and wiser, I must regretfully point out what I can't imagine is not the painfully obvious.
Strapless dresses are not particularly flattering to the majority of the population. I don't care what the designers are showing this season. If you've spent any time at all on wedding planning sites, admit it, you know what I'm saying here. Big girls sometimes look absolutely upholstered, big busted girls like myself are left to look down on what seems like acres of bare cleavage. The smallest girls look wrapped so snugly that they lose any hope for the sense of 'stage presence' you want as a bride.
All that said, do what you want, I'm just saying. For myself, being 38 and not even remotely interested in displaying 'bingo wings' on *my* special day...I want sleeves.
Sleeves, sleeves, O where are the sleeves?
Bah.
