“Time to drink Champagne and dance on the table!” the sign says. Well, it was a Wedding, so it would be rude not to, no? I had fully intended on doing just what the sign says, too. There was one problem though. My dress.
As you know, work has kept me pretty busy of late, and while this Wedding has been on my radar for quite some time I really hadn’t put any thought into what I was going to wear, (I know, completely out of character!) so much so that when I got out of bed that morning I still hadn’t picked out a dress. Ollie also seemed to be in the same position (slightly less out of character….) as he woke up in a complete flap about the state of his suit, which hadn’t made it to the dry cleaners as planned and was currently sat in a crumpled heap in the spare room, plastered in dog hair and fluff. And so, rather than setting about the task of choosing a frock for myself, I found myself spending the next couple of hours ironing, steaming and de-fluffing said suit, and decided to hand the dress selecting over to Ollie.
Now, I can’t blame him for picking this dress. This dress is awesome. It’s definitely one of my favourites – a slinky ASOS wiggle dress in a beautiful, stiff, teal and blue brocade fabric that holds me in in all the right places and makes me feel like Joan Holloway in Mad Men (well, I don’t quite cut the same hourglass figure as Christina Hendricks, lets face it but you know what I mean, and if I was ever going to come close to having an hourglass figure, it would be because of this dress). Being male, it’s not hard to see why this was the dress he chose. I, however, knew something about this dress that Ollie seemed to have forgotten. It doesn’t really fit. Ok, that might be an understatement. The holding in qualities I mentioned? It holds me in so tight that I feel like my organs have been displaced. You’d think Ollie would remember, since the last time I wore this dress, also to a Wedding, Ollie had to unzip me on the walk home and hide my modesty under his jacket because I thought I might actually pass out. Did I learn from this unpleasant experience, and throw the frock onto the eBay pile? Did I ‘eck. Well, look at it, it’s far too pretty to get rid of. So back into rotation it went, and on that fateful day I told myself that since I’ve lost a bit of weight since then it would probably be fine. It probably wouldn’t bunch unattractively around my abdomen because it was too snug across the bum. Or prevent me from sitting. Or eating. Or breathing. It would be fine. Besides, I had all of half an hour by then to finish getting ready, so the (poor) decision was made.
There should have been some signs early on that it wouldn’t, in fact, be fine. That I couldn’t bend down to paint my toenails, for one. That actually getting into the car was a major struggle for another. But I soldiered on and unwittingly became one of those irritating people who wears entirely inappropriate and uncomfortable clothing for the sake of beauty. People insist I must be pretty much constantly in pain due to my love of heels, and I’m always all “Nooooooo! No way. What do you think I am, freaking stupid? Only freaking stupid people wear things that make them uncomfortable!”. Erm, awkward…..
In other news, the Wedding itself was wonderful. A beautiful vintage style affair (with a sweet cart! I’m always won over with sweets!) and a fantastic day with loved ones that even an uncomfortable frock couldn’t spoil. In fairness, I’m dramatising – mainly because I drank so much Pimms that the actual events of the day are now a little blurry and I needed to fill the space somehow. It wasn’t really that bad. I did manage to breathe, and eat, and drink Champagne. I managed to sit down and even managed a bit of a boogie (strictly on the dancefloor though, I definitely couldn’t have gotten up on one of the tables!) so it wasn’t a complete disaster. You will notice though, that in most of the photos I’m standing up as tall and straight as I can, with my clutch bag held self-consciously in front of my stomach, as that was my preferred stance for the day! Lesson learnt though – just as soon as I luck out on a larger sized version of the frock it will be going on the eBay pile. And I totally don’t have an eBay alert set for the green and white version…..!
Love,
In this post: Dress, ASOS (similar) – Dune ‘Gwyneth’ Sandals (similar) – Clutch Bag, New Look (similar)
Picking the Day 