The Dress.

Today is our eighteenth Wedding Anniversary! In most weddings one of the main things that the day about is the dress! It has become such a huge part of the day, event and memory. When women ask each other about their weddings most will ask "What dress did you have?" and will want to see photos of it. Some people plan their whole wedding around the dress.

The theme of our wedding was 'As poor as church mice'. Simply because we were starting out life together, I was a student, Mud Boy at the start of his career. We were both on the first run of the ladder, so to speak. I made all the invitiations, the bouquets and hundreds and hundreds of paper church bride and groom mice name places, whilst sat in hospital.

To me, my dress had to reflex who I was - I think most brides feel this way. Some will have childhood visions of the whole day, they will have planned it from a little girl. I never did that. Yet I knew that my dress, needed to be a period dress. One not of this time, but a place where I felt I belonged. From the three periods in history I have the most fascination for, I chose the Regency Georgian dress which suited my figure and size the best.
This period of dress has just the tiniest of material bustles, as the fashion was slowly graduating towards the very early Victorian's with added hoops and padding. My dress had no hoops nor padding, it was as this is a material bustle. The only way in which my dress differed from this one is the sleeves. I had a short summer classic regency sleeve instead of a three quarter length, as we married on the hottest day of the year. An August wedding is almost sure to be hot. But the small train, bustle, neckline and straight skirt with lace trimmings is otherwise correct. None of my wedding photos show my whole dress in such a beautiful or elegant profile as this divine photo - which is why I am showing you this one, which is set against a dark background and quite clearly shows it's fine details. If it weren't for the sleeves this could be the very dress that I wore on our Wedding day.
An odd choice some would say, to marry in a dress style over a hundred's out of date, yet to me it just felt right. I saw the dress and knew it was the one before I had even tried it one and when I did it fit like a glove with no alterations needed. It was as if it had been made for me. I do not believe in coincidences. This was the only dress for me.