Sunday, November 12, 2006

A couple of weeks ago I posted pictures of myself in all the flower girl and bridesmaid dresses from my long-running career as a wedding participant. Someone left me a comment asking what exactly should be done with all the dresses of yore. I think her collection is doing the same thing as mine: making sure one end of the guest room closet serves a purpose. The sad part is I would imagine that I have close to $500 in four bridesmaid dresses living a life shrouded in dry cleaner bags. I probably don’t even own $500 worth of clothes in my regular closet!! Something is wrong with that picture.

So in honor of that comment, and for the owners of bridesmaid dresses everywhere – here is my list of ten possibilities for bridesmaid dresses of the past.

1. Have a girls night fashion show where every girl sports the worst dress she ever had to wear in a wedding. While selecting the dress you plan to wear, you might want to eliminate all dresses chosen by brides who could be present at the fashion show – unless you were hoping to simultaneously end a friendship.

2. Be a bridesmaid for Halloween. I actually did that one year. I was a fourth grader and reused the flower girl dress I’d worn in my sister’s wedding when I was a second grader. Clearly, two years later, it was more like a miniskirt than an evening gown – but it got the point across. And for you – depending on the decade of the dress, it could actually win you a prize for the scariest costume!

3. If you’re still in the decade of your life where you do at least one wedding a year, try to peer pressure all future brides into using the same dress (and color) that you’ve already had to wear for another wedding. I’m sure she’ll understand that though she’s had her heart set on black dresses from the time she was four, coral would be a much better color.

4. Nothing brings about a case of cold hard reality better than trying to stuff yourself into a dress you bought for a wedding eight years ago. I recommend trying on such dresses on a weekly basis following wedding participation. As soon as it begins to feel tight, you’ll know it’s time to diet!

5. And along that same line, never throw away the dress because you never know when that couple might decide to throw a 50th anniversary party and want the original wedding participants to attend dressed in the original garb. So you better still own it and you certainly better be able to fit into it. How embarrassing would that be? The bride (who can easily slip into her own gown...) stands across the room and points to you and says “See that girl whose dress is only zipped up to her waist? That was my maid of honor.” Or worse: “See that girl wearing a dry cleaner bag and carrying her dress?”

6. You just never know when you might give birth to quintuplet girls and you’ll need matching Christmas dresses for all of them. Of course with the price of diapers and formula (because face it, chicky, with FIVE, you will NOT be nursing), you will not be able to afford cute little Christmas dresses. You better hope you remember the days of Home Ec!! Get out the scissors and start making baby dresses!!

7. Perhaps as a side business, you’ll take up jewelry making – a very popular hobby these days – and you can transform the dresses into jewelry pouches to add to your sales. Of course even if you can get 25 pouches out of the dress, you’ll still have to raise the price of your jewelry by $5 to break even on what you initially paid for the material.

8. Never again can you say you can’t go to a ritzy office party because you have nothing to wear. HONEY! You have a whole selection right there!! You even have a whole collection of jewelry to match – because you know those brides were good girls and gave you jewelry as the surprise gift for being in the weddings! Who knows – you might even still have gloves or a hat or a bouquet of flowers to match!

9. Dress doesn’t fit and no hope that it ever will? No worries! Whack it off at the knee and use the extra material to widen it…and lookie there!! Festive new nighttime apparel. Still doesn’t fit? Cut it open down the front and make it into a robe. And you might call Nutrisystem while you’re at it.

10. And finally – you can always make a lasting memory by piecing all the dresses into a quilt. And then when you’re really old and you’ve forgotten everything about your life, you and your girlfriends can sit around in the nursing homes and guess which squares came from which wedding.

So there you go. Now you can’t say that you don’t know what to do with the dresses. I can’t help it if you don’t like the ideas. But you can’t say I didn’t try.