Memories & Dreams

Today, from Zelma's in Staunton I bought two crenoline slips for a total of $35...Owner Kimberly Berry gave me a deal, as she knew these were for my youngest daughter's wedding next week. I brought one to Broadway tonight for AM to try on, so I'd know if it fit or needed to be taken in (Sam's has a draw string and is adjustable). After trying it on, AM said she had tried her wedding dress on several times, but couldn't figure out what was missing, why it didn't look the same. When she saw the slip, she knew. She had borrowed a crenoline slip for her wedding and without it, the dress just didn't look the same. So I asked if she'd get it and try it on,. As Eliza helped pull elastic loops over minuscule buttons and Maggie watched, we reminisced the making of my daughter's wedding dress, my first attempt at a wedding gown, and the agony of trying to get the dress just perfect, of trying to create a sleeve that "worked" with the dress since a grandmother disaproved of sleeveless wedding dresses, of adding a veil at the request of another grandmother who believed that chaste brides should always have a veil, AND the joy of hours of labor turning into a dream of a dress, and the added bonus of discovering that my wedding veil, adapted to fit a headpiece Anna Maria made, was exactly the same length as the dress's train.
In a box somewhere I have similar photo taken seven years ago, a full length view taken at the Fillmore house as AM looked at herself in the full length mirror at the top of the stairs there.
The train hooks to the dress, so the girls couldn't try that on...but they did clip the veil in their hair. And they thought more about being princesses than brides, and wondered why the veil and train were so long.
"It's like a waterfall," Anna Maria told them.
That's the same thing she said when she first tried the dress on, and waterfalls and dragon falls have been a recurring theme in her and Steven's wedding.

Well, soon my other daughter's wedding dress will be added to my repertoire, and tonight I wondered, "Will I be able to see well enough to make the granddaughters' wedding dresses, should that opportunity avail itself?" And will this veil be a part of a third generation of weddings? And/or perhaps Anna Maria's dress and train will be a part of one or both of those gowns?