During the Pandemic there were things you never thought you would ever have to deal with and this, was one of many…
Whether you had to cancel your wedding due to the Pandemic or plans change (hey that’s life, right?), the question now is, what do we do with that wedding dress we bought but couldn’t use??
Like so many other brides in 2020, I had to postpone the big wedding to 2021. We still wanted to honor our original date and ended up having a backyard wedding at my mother’s house with our friends and family watching over zoom. It was amazing and a more intimate moment I could’ve hoped for. The only problem was that I couldn’t’ use my original dress as it wasn’t able to be altered that year. Now flash forward to 2021, still so many uncertainties, who is getting a vaccine who is not, and not wanting to put any of our friends’ children at risk we made the tough decision to cancel the big celebration all together.
It was heartbreaking to say the least, but I was already married to the man of dreams, though what to do with the dress? I saved and was able to buy my dream dress; it is gorgeous. The gown has an amazing beaded back piece, layers flowing down to the bottom with geometric lines that bring your eyes to see every piece of this dress. I couldn’t not do something with this dress!
First, I channeled my inner Friends and put the dress on, sat on my couch and started watching a movie with a beer in my hand. (I was alone in the house and no one to say otherwise… oh yeah, this was happening!) I had so much fun that my friend who was my maid of honor came over in her dress and joined me on the couch. This is a must do for all brides! I mean, we brides pay a decent amount of money for a dress that we could only wear for one day? Oh no, I was going to get my money’s worth on this baby.
Once I got that moment out of my system, I wanted to do something fun. I reached out to one of my old coworker’s wives and asked if she was available to do a fun photoshoot with the dress (her Instagram: @fisherandfilm). I had been following her work on Instagram and loved what she was doing. She got back to me that same day and we had a date set for the next weekend! I was super excited and couldn’t wait to do this.
The next weekend felt like it took FOREVER to get here but it was finally the day! We had packing to do that morning as we were moving in a few weeks, then I started getting ready. I did my own hair and makeup, put some pants on (I was NOT sitting in a field on bare skin lol) and asked Shin to help me get myself into the dress. You see the dress still wasn’t altered to my body and was therefore tight or loose in certain places. Thankfully the only part we had to really pin down was the cleavage (can’t let the girls loose!).
Once I got in the dress the next part to figure out was: how was I going to hike to the shoot location in this ballgown? But then I had an amazing idea, tuck the dress into an oversized shirt! Okay, I got this, it could work right? I get the shirt on, start to pull up the dress and realized this was a 2-person job very quickly. Shin came over, helped me gather the pieces up and… we got it in the shirt! We had a really good laugh at how I looked because I was like a marshmallow on top.
