Picked up my wedding gown today, that was an interesting experience. Now you might be saying asking "Why do YOU have a wedding gown?" Valid question. Quick answer - I was engaged to be married to a lovely woman, in reliance upon our planned nuptuals she ordered a wedding gown as brides to be tend to do, we broke up - hence no need for a dress, bridal shops, however, aren't big fans of cancelling orders for wedding gowns despite break ups, as such the dress had to be paid for, as I am the one who cancelled the wedding, I paid for the gown. I wasn't expecting to pay for the gown, in fact, in the grand scheme of cancelling the wedding, ending the relationship, moving out of the shared apartment, dividing our belongings, dealing with the expected and unexpected emotional issues, the family issues, the guilt issues, etc ... I had not even thought of the wedding gown. Until, that is, a few months after the break up. A few months after the planned nuptuals were to take place. A few months after I had last scene and spoken to her.
She called - no, that's not right, she emailed. Oh email, praise be to god for your existance, allowing someone to communicate without vocalization, allowing someone to contact an ex-fiance and ask them to pay for the rest of the wedding gown they ordered and forgot to finish paying for but would rather not pay for now since the wedding is cancelled and it hurts to much to deal with. Thank you email. Thank you for that. So she emailed her request and I, wanting to be the "good guy" despite the whole "we should'nt get married thing" agreed to pay for it.
And I did, eventually. I had every intention of taking care of it right away, even called the bridal shop to tell them, in a nice way, to stop pestering the former bride to be because the wedding was over and I was assuming any and all responsibility for the wedding gown. I had planned to stop by the shop and take care of all business, but kept putting it off. Understandable I guess, I was looking for a place to live, re-evaluating my lot in life, explaining to people over and over again why the wedding was cancelled, why we broke up, why "yes we did try, we were in counseling for over a year," explaining why we were in couples counseling for over a year BEFORE we were married, and answering lots of well meaning "are you ok"? questions. So I put it off. And, I'll admit, in the back of my mind was hoping that the lady's who run the bridal shop would forget about me. Forget about the dress. Forget about the aborted wedding. "Keep the money that's already been paid for it" I thought, in that magnanimous way I have at times like these. Let's just forget the whole thing. And for a while everyone did. Until Christmas.
Yeah. As if the Christmas holiday wasn't interesting enough - first Christmas in years that she wasn't a part of my life, first Christmas that we were supposed to be celebrating as a married couple, first Christmas I was the only single person in my family (dad recently got engaged AND married ... funny). OK, so boo freakin hoo for me, I'm just setting the scene. Setting the scene for when the bridal shop called me to inform that I had to pay the balance of the dress ... half of its value .. or the matter would be referred to a collections agency. That would be great, have a collection agency hunt me down to pay for a wedding dress. Have my credit report reflect that despite my otherwise fantastic credit history, my overall credit was fucked for life because I didn't pay for a wedding dress that I did not want for a wedding I did not have. So I paid. Over the phone. With my debit card - using my debit card, I guess, to pay off not only a debt to the shop, but maybe, just maybe a bit of debt I had to her. So that's what I gave myself for christmas boys and girls, a wedding gown. A wedding gown that I was fairly certain at the time would never fit me.
So, flash forward to 6 months later. This month. June. Suffice it to say, I've gone through the "healing process." I'm "over it" so to speak. Even decided it was time to date, put myself out there, doing all right in that department. But I realized ... I own a gown, a wedding gown that I haven't picked up yet. Now I was aware this entire time that I needed to pick it up, even had a number of ideas of what to do with it ... burn it; wear it and go sky diving; frame it to display on my wall with a sign "never, never fucking again" (that was a suggestion from a friend of mine - divorced). I also thought, pick it up, sell it on ebay, use the money for something fun. I just never got around to it. But this month I thought, I'm gonna do it. Part of it was the lawyer in me .. it had been a year since the initial transaction - the ordering of the gown - and I thought that perhaps they could get rid of the dress after holding it for a certain amount of time. The other part was timing ... we were supposed to get married on June 19, 2005. So our upcoming non-anniversary was upon me and I thought ... time to close that door don't you think. Funny enough, right around the 19th she emailed me. She, the one who last spoke to me on Christmas eve and had to terminate the phone call after 5 minutes because she couldn't stop crying. She, who texted me (thank god for text messages just like emails, so easy to transmit information without actually transmitting intention or feeling no?) shortly thereafter to tell me that "its too hard" to speak with me, "it hurts to much." Despite countless offers to "talk" from my side of the vacant battlefield, she never took me up on it. Until last week. Until she emailed and asked if we could "meet for coffee," to "discuss things" to "get some closure." We didn't meet, by the way. The closure she was looking for, not yet available. My schedule didn't allow it. Could I have made my schedule bend to my will? Perhaps. But did I want to? Did I want to sit in a public coffee house with a woman who couldn't bare to speak with me on the phone for A YEAR so that we could discuss SOME THINGS and get CLOSURE? Not really. Will I? Sure, some day, not this month. I have my closure. Had my closure. Closed that shit up months ago with the help of some therapy of my own. And if she needs to meet for her closure, I'm happy to help, but when I WANT TO. The dress was the last act of reparations I was going to make. The last punishment gladly accepted for a crime of which I don't feel I was guilty of. I may have cancelled the wedding, but I had to, we had to, I was sick of being punished for it. And I get punished enough every time I go into Starbucks and pay for overpriced coffee I don't yet need to up the ante and feel awful all over again as I sip from my 5$ latte.
But the dress. It reminded me ... get the dress, get the gown, take the step. So I did. Today I drove to Tarzana - which, by the way, they should rename HELL as it was about 1 million degrees - and picked up my wedding gown. MINE. And it was a unique experience. The women at the bridal shop were very nice, but treated me as if my family just died and they didn't know how to speak with me. They were gentle, I could almost hear their forced whispers in the back room as they likely discussed "Oh, this is from that cancelled wedding .. he's here to pick up HER dress ... I wonder what happened?" When they brought the gown out, all zipped up in a lovely white garment bag bearing the former brides name and the former brides planned wedding date, they did so in a solemn like procession that reminded me a little of a funeral. It became much more funereal when they asked "would you like to see it?" Shall we open the casket and give you a glance? "No, thanks, I'm sure it looks like whatever its supposed to look like, thanks." I responded and tried to sound ok with that, and I was ok with it, wasn't I? The woman asked "should I take the name tag off of it?" Which was sweet, fairly unnecessary though, its not as if I forgot who it was for. Not like I was gonna give it to someone as a gift only to realize "shit, HER name is still on it." But the woman thought it would help, so I let her. She removed the tag from the dress. Whatever the desired effect of that gesture, however, it was muted, considerably, but the fact that the former brides name was still boldy emblazoned upon the garment bag - I removed that myself, later, for good measure. Finally, whe asked "so, is there any chance that the wedding will happen?" Which was a nice question to ask, I mean, here it was over a year from the scheduled date and I, the alleged groom, was picking up the gown ... but I answered her, honestly "Oh, no, I haven't seen her in a year." "I am so sorry" she quietly replied as she and her employee, shared a look of "poor guy" then looked to me with eyes saying "I hope your gonna be ok fella". "These things happen," I said, trying to sound sincere and "well-adjusted" at the same time. I think it worked, but who knows. Then I left. With my wedding gown, that will never fit me, that I just took an awful picture of, that I guess I'll sell. Eventually. Unless I can get myself down to a size 1. If I can, at least I know what I'm wearing for Halloween.
