Lucinda’s Quest – Revisited
I have been remiss in posting about my efforts to find the perfect dress for Laura’s wedding. The wedding has come and gone, I was present and attired in a lovely gown. Back to the efforts. After spending hours in fruitless search at the mall (both Cool Springs and Green Hills) as well as online I was was feeling despondent. Are there no more pretty dresses for women with less than perfect figures? Frankly, there’s a lot of ugly out there. Finally inspiration hit. I have a friend who is a fashion designer here in Tennessee, Olia Zavozina. We’ve done trunk shows for her in our shop and supplied our jewelry for her fashion photo sessions. I asked her to create a dress for me for the wedding. She came to the shop with her fabrics and Alexis, Laura and I chose some fabric and voila! a dress is created. Have to tell you, I felt like Cinderella. Imagine the scene where all of the critters are making her dress for the ball. In my case it was Olia, Tamara (her seamstress), Alexis and Laura. I just stood while beauty was made. Ok, I got to hold the mirror due to a lack of birds.
Olia gathering her pins after pinning me into the bodice of my mother of the bride dress.
This was a fairly painless way to get a dress. Certainly less painful than running from store to store and not finding anything great or even good. Laura created this necklace for me to wear with this gown. Then Olia adjusted the neckline to compliment the necklace. How cool is that? This was definitely and Adornments wedding! I was soooo adorned. Wait until you see the finished ensemble! Thank you Olia and Laura for making me feel beautiful.
Laura's necklace and Olia's dress
The Quest Begins
My quest, in Laura terms, is to find the perfect dress to wear at her wedding. One would think…..Go shopping! duh. Well, been there done that. It’s not so easy to find a beautiful dress to fit an imperfect body, that looks good, is appropriate, coordinates with the wedding, etc. etc. There are a lot of ugly dresses available these days. And, to top it off I refuse to wear beige. I look terrible in it and I’m just no good at sitting down and shutting up either. So instead of complaining my quest begins with improving the body. Won’t help with the myriad ugly dresses but should do wonders for my self esteem. Here’s my plan, gonna start paying very careful attention to what I put in my mouth. No More Grazing! Also, I will dedicate at least one half hour each day to some form of physical exercise . Here I am staring with the doable and hoping to form a habit that I can build on. I’ve been a slacker lately. I started the paying attention to food last week and lost 2 lbs. Hey it’s a start. Started the exercise portion of my program yesterday. I’m a little sore today but that’s all good.
In order to find the perfect dress I need to look at what went well and where I missed the mark in my last quest. I had only a few requirements and yet I spent a lot of time searching for the right dress.
My requirements for the dress were:
Must coordinate with the wedding party (They wore red silk kimonos with black obi belts)
Must fit and look nice
Must be able to dance in it
As a guideline of what I want to improve I’m going to reveal the mistakes of my mother of the bride dress for Alexis’ wedding.
Lucinda at Alexis' Wedding
Mistake # 1 – Peau de soix – another french word ….can’t translate it but it’s what a lot of bride’s maid and mother of bride or groom dresses are made of these days. It’s a lovely fabric but it’s shiny. Apparently shiny fabrics show all of our figure’s imperfections as soon as we move. Who knew? Tim Gunn and the ‘What Not to Wear’ people but I was uninformed until I saw the pics. Oh my!
Mistake #2 – Neckline. This one I knew but couldn’t find a better neckline so I settled. Note to self … don’t settle!
Mistake #3 – It looks perfectly nice when standing still in front of a mirror. Not so when moving. Who wants to be a statue at their daughter’s wedding? Do remember the sit down and shut up thing I said earlier.
In assessing my performance I can honestly say I acheived coordinating with the wedding party, fit and moveabilty for dancing. and failed in the looking nice department. All in all, only three mistakes that I know about. You people can probably point out another 10 or so….feel free. I received a lot of compliments on how beatiful I looked. It was a happy day and I had a lot of fun. That part I got totally right.
The quest continues.
