Out of the closet

Once a reluctant bride comes out of the closet, she comes all out.
There's no dancing around it. Once the date is set, no matter how solid and down to earth she seemed beforehand, every little incidental increment is scruti¬nized as if she were solving world peace.
It is in fact my guess that if the G8 summit had a registry instead of an agenda, women on the verge of wedded bliss would make short work of solving some of humankind's toughest prob¬lems.
I'd like to think I was different. I'd like to think that I was calm and didn't ever let it get away from me that the marriage was the big deal, not the wedding.
The fact that I spent more than 400 hours putting together favors and trinkets for the tables and proofread the same 40 words on the invitations 4,000 times, how¬ever, is evidence to the contrary.
It was the dress that brought me back to reality.
My mom was ill at the time, but it was important to me that she be a part of the selection process. So, on one of her good days, off we went to a local wed¬ding warehouse to check out the sales.
I wouldn't have minded getting married in jeans, so a cheap dress didn't seem too off the mark or the money. But no soon¬er had I made the decision to go gown, I was wishing I'd eloped. I was put out that I had to make an appointment to look through racks of dresses. I was livid when I got there and found out the appointment left me only one hour to do so before the store closed. I hated that every clerk in the store was more giddy about my wedding than I was.
After wasting 15 minutes while our attendant listened to my desires and gathered every dress in direct opposition to them, I turn the job over to mom and she selects a few that look accept¬able.
While waiting for the fitting room attendant (another useless construct as the place is mostly empty), a woman with a thick Jamaican accent, tidy suit and a measuring tape slung around her neck heads my way. "I can take you here, honey."
As I cram myself and my selec¬tions into the mirrored cell, my mom eyes a sullen looking man who loudly complains to his betrothed that her dress doesn't look sexy enough. I close the door just in time to hear my mom make her way over to the couple and inform them directly about a little thing called SUPER¬STITION.
Twenty minutes elapse as I change from dress to dress. I start to feel a little dejected as I realize I look a little too much like Morti¬cia Addams in white. The atten¬dant swings open the door peri¬odically to throw in a hoop skirt, shoes and a veil that costs more than all the dresses combined. I find myself jamming a shoe through the handle to keep her out. Finally, I emerge from the closet wearing the last of the designer specials - a $99 gown that my mother fished from the bottom of the sales rack. Oddly enough, it looks O.K. Mom thinks it's 'old fashioned.' A good sign, I think.
At that crucial decision-making moment, a woman in the dress¬ing room next to mine bounds out in a long, jewel-encrusted dress. A tattoo of a dove peeks out from the lace neckline. "I'm trying the dress on for my daugh¬ter," she gleefully tells me. "She's pregnant now, but she'll be my size again when she gets married ... You know, after the baby comes."
It occurs to me then that some experiences just can't be dupli¬cated. In fact, I might venture, this very moment is the kind of experience a bride should savor. So, as the fitting room attendant fiddles with the sleeves of the gown I am wearing, endangering my balance atop the carpeted dressing perch, I make an execu¬tive decision ... "I'll take it."