Back when I was planning a wedding I didn’t understand the fuss about wedding shoes. I heard many of my friends complain about how hard it is to find nice ‘bridal’ shoes. By bridal they basically meant white, or at least cream, ivory or silver, something that matched their dress completely. I’ll admit, that probably is a hard task, but I never understood why the shoes had to match. It’s not like every day we pick shoes that are the exact same colour as our outfit, so why would we do it on our wedding day? Then I often heard them say something even more strange to me – that it didn’t really matter in the end as they’d be covered by the dress, so no point worrying about getting something special. That’s just crazy talk. The shoes, to me, are just as important as the dress. My loved ones know me as a shoe person, so while they will want to see me in my dress, I know they’ll all be discussing what kind of shoes I might wear and waiting for the moment when I reveal a flash of them. So I always had plans to wear a statement shoe.
I used to think this made me pretty lucky – there are so many beautiful shoes out there, I could literally take my pick while other Brides are desperately googling ‘white shoes’. Yet somehow, completely unbeknown to me, I subconsciously became obsessed with a very particular shoe. I don’t know where the vision came from, because I didn’t I didn’t even have a concrete colour scheme, but somewhere along the way I decided my wedding shoes had to be purple. It couldn’t just be any shade of purple either. I’d conjured up an exact shade of purple – not quite fuschia, not quite Cadbury purple, but something in the middle. Not too much to ask? Oh, I forgot – they also had to be by my favourite designer, Christian Louboutin. Ah. Slightly more challenging. I kept on telling myself it didn’t really matter, that, again, I could wear any bloody shoe I wanted, but once this idea had lodged itself in my brain I just couldn’t shift it, and every god damn shoe I looked at didn’t live up to ‘The Shoe’ which was completely ridiculous, because it simply didn’t exist.
Except it does exist, and it only came into existence after my wedding plans were no more. Thanks a lot, Christian! I thought we were friends? When I needed this shoe you brought out every other shade of purple imaginable – violet, lilac, indigo, plum, I even toyed with a pastel pink pair at one stage. But the moment I’m NOT planning a wedding, you create these – one of my favourite ever styles of shoe, in suede, in THE EXACT SHADE I wanted?! And now I have no legitimate excuse to spend that much money on shoes I’m unlikely to wear for a large percentage of the year thanks to our weather system. Cruel. Plain and simple.
Can someone please propose to me so I can buy these and not feel guilty? You can scrimp on the ring if you like?
Love,
Picking the Day 