And the Bride Wore Burgundy

It was all decided. We were just a couple of middle-aged kids in love, and we were getting married. The courtship wasn’t your typical affair- oh, it was an affair alright, there just wasn’t anything typical about it- and we knew early on the wedding was going to be, shall we say, non-traditional. From the self-written interfaith ceremony, to my 18-year-old son acting as Man of Honor, to the chocolate-on-chocolate wedding cake, everything about our wedding was wonderfully unique and special and totally “us.”

My personal contribution to the uniqueness of our wedding was my choice of attire. One day it occurred to me. I knew what I wanted in a wedding dress. I turned to my fiancé, and said with clear conviction, “I want the dress to be red.”

“Okay,” responded my fiancé, as casually as though I had said I wanted chicken for dinner. Of course, this was the guy who loved me for who I was and was determined to make all my dreams come true, even if it meant painting the bedroom red (which he had already done, before I moved in).

Nonetheless, I expected resistance from the masses (i.e. family and friends), but no one seemed to care what I wore to my wedding. Boy, this was a lot different than my first wedding, when I was in my 20’s, and everyone had all kinds of opinions about everything.

Then I embarked upon the mind bogglingly difficult task of finding my wedding dress. Granted, I had some issues, beyond the fact that the dress had to be red (or maroon, or burgundy or wine – something in the red family). I wanted something somewhat formal. I wanted sleeves on my dress, considering that we were getting married in November. To complicate things further I was a plus size woman in my 40’s, and I was on a tight budget.

I know for a fact that plus size people marry and are in weddings all the time, but you wouldn’t know it when you enter the formidable portals of a bridal shop, where I found myself looking at mother-of-the-bride and bridesmaid dresses. Rhiannon, a young saleslady at one local wedding retailer, was actually very helpful. She produced a really pretty, interesting long fitted suit that came in a Cranberry color that… was not made in my size. Why, I wondered? Did the creators of the dress conclude that no large woman should or would choose to wear a fitted dress?

I saw a beautiful bridesmaid's gown that was satin, a-line and trimmed in fur, but in red with white fur I was afraid I would evoke images of Mrs. Santa Claus. I would have felt better if I could have tried it on but, as Rhiannon expected, no store stocked in my size. That's the other thing. Because they rarely carried samples in my size, I was expected to take it on faith that I might look okay in a dress and just order it. Are you kidding me? My wedding dress? I don’t think so.

I was beginning to despair. My fiancé assured me that I would look wonderful to him in anything, even a gunny sack, but I didn’t really want to wear a gunny sack to my wedding, even if it were red, fitted and had long sleeves.

A co-worker knew of a bridal place that carried a nice selection of discounted plus size bridal dresses, but she couldn’t remember the name of the store and wasn’t sure if it was in Steubenville (Ohio) or Wheeling (West Virginia). And there was another place she knew of in Sharon, PA that carried plus size discounted merchandise and that specialized in evening wear. Well, if a field trip is what it took…but I thought it ironic that I lived in Pittsburgh, the biggest metropolitan area in western Pennsylvania, and I might have to travel to Sharon or out of state to get a formal red dress to wear at my wedding.

I decided to go downtown to try the department stores – Kaufman’s and Lord and Taylor’s. And Saks?, asked my fiancé. Well, I just laughed at the thought of Saks. Did I mention we were on a tight budget? I doubted that Saks would have plus sizes, and was sure that anything I did find there would be far too expensive. My trips to other department stores failed to produce a dress. Oh, there was a quite stunning red evening dress at L & T that might have been appropriate if the evening in question was being spent at, say, the Moulin Rouge, but I certainly didn’t want to wear it to my wedding. My fiancé told me to humor him, and we headed for Saks.

When we entered “Salon Z,” (yes, there WAS a plus size section of the store), we turned to the left and there it was. An entire wall of what was my ultimately perfect wedding dress. It was exactly what I had in mind. It was a floor-length burgundy satin dress with a fitted waist, sleeves, and a V-shaped neckline. Better yet, the first dress I tried on, in my standard size, was a little too big, so I had to go down a size. When I walked out of the dressing room, my fiancé teared up at the sight of me. The piéce de resistence? It was on sale. The price of the dress was about a 60% markdown from the original price, but an additional “surprise” discount at the register brought the price to about one-third the original price, affordable for even the tightest budget.

I married my wonderful husband wearing my beautiful burgundy wedding gown on November 29, 2003, almost six years ago. In the end, it turned out that finding the right dress was like finding the right man – it took a long time and some heartache along the way, but when I did they were both the perfect fit for me.