I'm still recovering from yesterday. My mom and I spent hours upon hours shopping. We got lost on the way home. I wore heels for more than twenty minutes, and my feet are still swollen. I tried on countless dresses. I paraded myself in front of complete strangers, watched a dozen eyes look at me looking at myself in mirrors bigger than my bedroom, and spent more money on one item of clothing than I probably ever will again.
But I bought my wedding dress, so none of that really matters.
I knew when we got in the car yesterday that I was coming home with a dress (or at least the promise of one). My stomach grows more every day. My pants feel tighter each time I force them to button. Even my flowiest of flowy tops are starting to cling to the beginnings of a bump. I needed to get a dress before my stomach undeniably morphs into a convex fessel.
So my mom and I drive to a store in Lebanon, about 45 minutes away from Murfreesboro.
The second we walk in, I feel, for the first time, like a real bride, in the cheesy, romantic comedy sense of the word. And a pregnant one, natch.
Inside, there are three mirrors in a semi-circle, sitting in the middle of a bustling room, dresses lining the walls. In front of each mirror, a stepping stool for the girls to stand on. Behind it, a bench for the mothers, the friends, the grandmothers and their compression panty-hose.
There are at least five girls there trying to find "the one." Waiting for my appointment, my mom and I stand in the doorway, watching each mini-circus unfold. Girl comes out of dressing room, holding up HUGE diamond-encrusted train as she walks, and steps onto the platform. She examines herself, turning this way and that, a glassy, awed expression on her face. The observers tilt their heads this way and that, sometimes nodding in approval, sometimes trying to politely tell her that she looks like a sparkly cupcake. The rest of us, the ones not belonging to that particular party, don't hide the fact that we're watching. We all stare. And when the next girl emerges from a curtain and walks onto a platform, our gazes turn to her.
I get more and more nervous waiting for my appointment. For some reason, every girl trying on dresses this particular day is a size triple zero, and I say this without the slightest hint of sarcasm because I am, and always have been, a tiny person. Thank years of Crohn's Disease for that. I've never been bigger than a size two, and I usually struggle to put weight on. At my sickest, I've eighed under 80 pounds. I've spent most of my life trying to GAIN weight, trying to not look like a sickly 13-year-old.
But in wedding dress world, especially for someone who's just shot up 7 pounds in two months because she's growing a baby, who's middle section now isn't an inch smaller than the rest of her, everything is upside down. The girl you're watching examine her profile in a corseted, Cathedral-style gown, who has the slightest indentation of ribs apparent on her chest, she's wearing a size 12 in that wedding dress. It's cruel.
I already knew exactly the kind of dress that I wanted. I knew it way before I got pregnant, but it just so happens that it'll work perfectly for an unpredictable post-baby body. I want flowy, I want breathable, I want comfortable, and I don't want to look like a cupcake, or a princess. I want to look like me, wearing a beautiful dress.
And then I see it, on a mannequin toward the back of the store. My mom and I walk toward it at the same time, mouths open. I push a dozen women out of the way, all there to watch the same girl try on the same dress with varying train length over and over again. It's perfect. It's the dress I always wanted. My mom spins it around. She digs her hand under the back, sending two of the clips making it cling to the mannequin flying to the floor. She finds the price tag. It's half the price of the dress we'd found pre-pregnancy. It's downright affordable. Of course, at this point, our frantic groping of the mannequin has left the impeccable display in shambles. Once we let go the dress falls to the floor in a sad, crumpled mess. People stare.
I waited to try the dress on last. The sales lady has picked about eight other dresses for me to try, and I ablige. Some of them I like, they fit with my general don't-cling-to-my-stomach theme.
But, of course, because I'm a bride and I'm in a store filled with sequins and tulle, she has me try on at least one that would make Princess Barbie squeal with delight.
I struggled just to get it off the hanger, because ohmydeargod how can one article of clothing weigh 100 pounds? But I manage to wiggle it off and step into its still-erect structure. I pull it up to my chest, holding it in place. When I stepped out of the curtain, I saw everyone's attention focus on me, including my mom, sitting alone on a bench across the store, who shoots me a look of pity because she knows what's about to ensue.
With the back still gaping open, I step (or shuffle, with a train longer than my body trailing behind me) toward the mirror, and let the sales lady start the entombment process. With each pull of the string, I feel a gush of air forced from my lungs. Five minutes of huffing and puffing later, and the sales lady gives up. That'll just have to do, she says, it won't lace up any further. And this dress is a size 16.
I've already wrestled with the decision of whether or not to tell her I'm pregnant. On one hand, it's none of her business. On the other, it might prevent her from pulling on the damn corset strings so demonically tight. But there are people to every inch of me, and surely any admission I could give her would be overheard by someone, and the way it works in rooms like that hardly a minute would pass before everyone would know I was the pregnant one, the girl getting married because she got knocked up, the one in the shotgun wedding.
But I am none of those things. I hate the stigma surrounding marriage and pregnancy. Perhaps it comes from hearing one-too-many horror stories about girls from my high school and their cheating baby daddies, or one-too-many caveman jokes about pregnancy being the best and only reason for marriage. I understand wholeheartedly that having a mother and a father is a good thing and probably the ideal way to be raised (I'm lucky that I can't say from experience otherwise), but the thought of two people forcing themselves into a life together just sounds sad and archaic to me. Birth control would be the obvious solution. I understand there are always exceptions and that wonderful couple exist out there who just happened to rush a wedding because of a pregnancy. But it's not the norm.
Jason and I, though, have been together for six years, and we've been engaged for seven months. This pregnancy is just a little bump in the road (and stomach) of our best-laid plans.
You can't, however, be the pregnant girl in a wedding dress without having that Kill Bill stigma attached, and that's part of the reason I didn't want to marry Jason before the baby. We'll get married when we're good and ready, when we have time to plan it, and when I can get drunk at my reception. The fairtytale we always imagined it, baby or not.
So I didn't tell her. I let her try to fit this size 16 corset over my baby bump, and part of me enjoyed her frustration because, seriously, what part of "I only want flowy, Grecian-inspired dresses" is so hard to comprehend?
When I'm finally able to resume breathing and change into the dress my mom and I had nearly-broken off the mannequin, it was every part the cliche, "this is the one" movie moment you'd expect. I tried it on, I walked onto the platform, I felt all the eyes on me and, for that brief moment, I relished it. The fabric flowed over my bump just like I'd hoped. It was beautiful. Five minutes later, and I'm back in my regular clothes, and we're at the register paying for it.
I finally told the sales girl my little secret. After she pulled out the measuring tape I knew it was coming. My bust and hips measured, literally, TWO TIMES smaller than my middle. She asks if it would be okay for her to write it down on my information sheet, only because her boss "would never let her" place an order for a dress to fit the size of my bust when my stomach called for a size with an extra-digit attached. I say it's fine, of course, because I was getting my dress. The dream one.
I guess it wasn't my fantasy to be battling heartburn and rumbling gas while I tried on my wedding dress, but it was still every bit as special.
Now, my wedding will be a true celebration of family. Me, Jason, and our little surprise.
I can't wait.
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