Goodbye Dress

    I had been looking for something I could do with my wedding dress from 2004. Ever since I brought it back from the cleaners preserved and encased in a big white box, it has been sitting on a shelf of whatever dwelling we had at the time.
   I don't like having items that cannot be used. I needed to find some use for the dress.
   There were several options. I could give it to Goodwill. I could donate it to some organization that provides wedding dresses to women who can't afford them. I could just put it in a box and give it away. Somehow that route didn't appeal to me.
    I couldn't figure out why. It wasn't the dress I wanted. I wanted something with a elbow length or at least a cap sleeve. I wanted it to be tea length or maybe have a handkerchief hem. I didn't want it to be one of those boufy, poufy things that make the bride look like a gigantic marshmallow. I dislike trying on clothes so there was only one dress buying expedition. I wound up getting a dress with spaghetti straps, a long skirt and a small train. It was the second most expensive item in the wedding. Only the dinner reception had cost more. For years I railed against the dress and the whole church ceremony that required me to buy it. (Don't get me wrong, I love being married, I just thought the whole church ceremony was wrong.)
  Given this it should have been easy for me to haul the box into a car and take it to someplace where it would get used. I just couldn't do it. That dress meant something to me. I didn't want it to be a costume for some high school play. I didn't want it to become a canvas for someone's art.  I didn't want it hanging on a cheap wire hanger looking uncared for. I didn't want someone to trash it. That dress was special to me.
  There was a bit of opposition to my marriage to C. There were hurdles we had to jump. There were arguments with family members. There were decisions about a bunch of things that really didn't matter to me. We had to take a marriage class that was meant for young people just starting out. It didn't cover anything that C and I would have to face as a couple.
  The wedding day finally came. I walked down the aisle in my big white dress, my head covered with a veil. I felt silly clinging to my father's arm because I was wearing heels and didn't want to fall. We got through the ceremony. I almost put C's ring on the wrong hand and the minister who married us kept referring to me as "SG", a nickname I sometimes used. C played the song he had written for me without a hitch. I took C's arm and we strolled up the aisle. My favourite hymn was playing. We had done it. We were married. We had survived and prevailed.
   The dress was special to me. It was the dress I wore when I married my closest friend, the person I love best in this world. I couldn't just let it go to someone who didn't care about it.
  That still left the question of what was I going to do with it. I wouldn't have minded storing it if I had a daughter or other female relative who would cherish it as a family heirloom. My stepdaughters certainly had no attachment to it as I did.
  I needed to find a use for it.
  It was not the kind of dress that could be made into another more usable dress. It couldn't be used as material for a blessing gown for an infant. What could I do with it?
  Then I read something on the internet about a woman who made a quilt with old dresses. That was it. It would make a lovely quilt. I would still have it and it would be something that I could use. It was perfect. There was just one thing wrong with that plan.
   I don't know how to quilt. In fact I barely know how to sew. I would have to find someone to make it for me. I looked on the internet to see if there were seamstresses who did such things. I couldn't find anything. I didn't know what to do. I couldn't do it myself.
  I decided that I would ask around church to see if this was a project that anyone would want to take on. I would happily pay someone for their time and any materials needed. I mentioned this to my friend Sarah.
  It turns out that she loves to quilt and would be happy to do this for me. I just about cried with relief. I knew that Sarah would do a good job.
  She emailed me some ideas for patterns and I picked one. It was a wedding ring pattern. It just seemed fitting given that materials. I told her the colours that I had at my wedding. She wrote back that she would do her best to use them.
  I took the dress to be shipped this week. Before I sent it off I opened the box to look at it. I had not seen it since the day I took it to be cleaned and preserved after the wedding. The bodice had small pearls and silver seed beads on it. I didn't remember that. It doesn't show up in the pictures. I gave it a loving pat and told it where it would be going. I told it that it would be used to make something beautiful and it would no longer be stuck in a box in a closet.
  Then I closed the lid. "Goodbye dress," I thought to the box. "Travel safe. I'll see you again......"