Just Grin and Wear It
Deep in a closet of my mother’s home are three dresses I will never wear again.
It’s not that they are too small or too big or past seasons’ castaways.
No, it’s because they are bridesmaids dresses and, despite what every bride says, they cannot be worn again. Not with altering, not at another formal event, not ever. That’s just female propaganda, like when mothers tell you they can’t remember the pain of childbirth.
No, a bridesmaid dress can’t be worn again because, well, how many occasions call for a mauve floor-length gown with enough taffeta in the skirt to cushion a fall from 10,000 feet and with sleeves as pumped as Lou Ferrigno? Or a two-piece mint green outfit with a hip-enhancing peplum waist and a matching hat that must be discreetly anchored with 75 bobby pins?
Suppose for a moment you did wear a bridesmaid dress again. Every woman in the room would know. I was once on a receiving line when a guest came sheepishly down the row in the very same dress as the bride’s attendants. The poor thing had shortened hers but fooled no one. The fabric rose at the hip is always a dead giveaway.
To be blunt, bridesmaids dresses typically run from the homely to the just plain cruel. “You’re forced to wear gowns that look like costumes because the material is so cheap,” says Donna Allen, an art director for Mattel and professional attendant, having served eight times.
Two dresses stand out in her memory as particularly dreadful. One was a gown “in the most hideous cobalt blue you could imagine,” accented with cheap plastic white buttons that the bride insisted not be covered. “I felt like Snow White the entire day.”
The other was of the pink tutu variety, and with 22 people in the wedding party, “We looked like a ballet troupe.”
Mind you, she had to pay for those dresses.
Computer artist Angela Alcerro of Downey shares Allen’s pain. Red-haired and fair-skinned, she once had to wear a “disgustingly bright” fuchsia dress topped by a straw hat strewn with ribbons that also clashed with her coloring. Worse, the dress had puffy sleeves and still another ribbon circling the waist. “It looked like a muumuu with a string around it.”
Which leads to two questions: Why are these dresses so ugly? And why do brides choose them?
Allen blames the ugly dresses on a lag in fashion evolution. “Years ago, people got married younger. I think [designers] never bothered to change the patterns. That’s why there are still bows and all those frills.”
Designer Nicole Miller, who produces a gorgeous line of 11 bridesmaid dresses, believes price is the culprit. She says many cost-conscious brides opt for cheap dresses that designers have attempted to make fancy with ornate additions. “They tchotchke them up.”
Miller, now readying her fourth collection, originated the line after an encounter with one horrid creation. “We had a 1950s prom for my partner’s wife, and everybody scoured the thrift shops for dresses,” she recalls.
“One woman wore this polyester chiffon floral dress. It was truly the ugliest thing we’d ever seen. When we asked where she got it, she said she’d worn it in a wedding a month before.”
OK, so ugly is out there for the picking. But that doesn’t explain why an otherwise stylish woman imposes the bizarre on people she claims are friends.
Perhaps with the high cost of weddings and the cast of extras, a bride starts to think of her wedding as a production, and in the best Hollywood tradition she wants a runaway blockbuster hit. She can see it now: Ruffles! Gloves! All in . . . turquoise!
And the co-stars are not going to get in the way.
“Maybe it’s that women just like to buy their own clothes and you’ll never please them,” Allen suggests in defense of the brides.
As evidence, she points to the dresses she chose for her June wedding: simple A-line styles in a matte gold silk/satin. “Not a tacky gold lame, not a bow or a button.” The response from some in her party? “This is just so plain.”
Or maybe it’s as simple as Miller’s theory: “They’re just not thinking.”
Whatever the explanation, if you graciously accept an invitation to be a bridesmaid, you gotta go with the program. You’ve got to wear that . . . that. . . thing, and smile all the while.
So, take a deep breath. You’re going to become acquainted with three of the scariest words ever--peau de soie--and you’re going to ram your feet into those fabric shoes that brides insist must be dyed to match the dress (yeah, right) even though they’re barely visible.
And you’ll do it because it’s their day.
“It’s someone you love and care about up there,” Allen says. “You’ve made them happy. You’ll never have to wear it again.
“But there’ll always be pictures.”
Which is why Alcerro took more extreme measures with her fuchsia muumuu.
“I decided I was not going to wear it anymore [after the ceremony]. I went home and put on a blue Angora dress I knew I looked good in.
“When I went to the reception, everyone asked me what happened. I told them I ripped the dress all down the side. In the pictures, everyone’s in these fuchsia dresses and I’m there in blue angora.
“But everyone looks nice.”
