Vow Renewals 2016

In a little less than a year we will be celebrating our 25th wedding anniversary. Like most couples we began our life together with very little. I wasn't working and DH's career had not yet taken off in the way it one day would. We announced our intention to marry during Christmas 1990 celebrations and my parents gifted us with a $1,000 bill sometime afterward. This would be our wedding budget. I can still remember most of the expenses: $40 for a vintage cream-coloured skirt suit from Ragpicker's Anti-Fashion Emporium. I had seen the suit months if not years beforehand and I returned there hardly daring to hope it might still be there on the rack waiting to be plucked. $60 for cream-coloured pumps from Fredelle. It was a challenge to find such shoes in February and I was kind of mortified to have to purchase them from Fredelle, which was much-maligned among my fellow employees when I worked at Aldo. A cream-coloured pillbox hat with birdcage veil. I think it cost $26 and it may have been from Belle Rykiss but I can't say for certain. $80 for plain 10 karat gold wedding bands from Consumer's Distributing. $200 for the flowers. A big expense but there was no way I wasn't going to have a beautiful bouquet - gardenias, roses and stephanotis, all in white with bear grass and little tufts of white tulle tucked in amongst the blooms. Additional small corsages and boutonnieres. DH got a new tie, black with large cream-coloured polka dots, and a new cream-coloured MEXX shirt, probably from Eaton's. The biggest expense was the suite at the Delta Hotel and ordering room service breakfast the morning after the wedding. An almost incomprehensible extravagance in our relatively Spartan lifestyle. The ceremony itself was at the Law Courts, and brother and sister-in-law threw a come-and-go wine and cheese for us at my parents' house in the evening. About 40 people came. We baked our own wedding cake from scratch. We had a donation of wedding photography from my friend who was also my maid of honour. My hair was teased into a puffy French twist by a hairdresser friend of DH's. We borrowed a camcorder and my brother taped the ceremony for us. It was a decidedly budget occasion. While I am grateful in hindsight that limited financial resources precluded what surely would have been a regrettable puffy dress decision, I have always lamented that I missed out on my chance to wear a long, completely irrational, lavish, luxurious and probably ridiculous veil. And so we find ourselves decades later. We began discussing a special trip to mark our milestone 25th anniversary. DH suggested Hawaii as neither of us had ever been and it seemed a grand enough destination for the celebration. Bucket list stuff. And that's when I realized that perhaps I might have one more opportunity to explore my fascination with veils. A vow renewal ceremony. In Hawaii. A lei of orchids, flowers in my hair, an ocean breeze lifting a magical white haze to trail behind me. Like any self-respecting woman of the modern age I began by Googling and creating a new Pinterest board. I was able to narrow things down a bit immediately because I knew it had to be cathedral length. I hadn't waited 25 years to settle for a measly fingertip. I discovered that not only were veils made of tulle, but they were also sometimes made of organza. I was momentarily flummoxed. Which to choose? Well, how about two layers, organza on the bottom with tulle overlaid? My logic sequence: 1) if one layer of fabric is good then two layers is therefore doubly good. 2) it would restore the cosmic balance and repair any rifts in the space-time continuum caused by the initial veil omission. Settled. Then came the questions of to-edge-or-otherwise-trim-and-bedazzle. Surprisingly what I saw of blinged-out veils really didn't capture my imagination. I was not after a glamour-puss look. I wanted ethereal, dreamy. And while lovely in their own way, I also ruled out the ribbon and pencil edge. Then I saw the Alencon lace and instantly the decision was made. I trekked to the fabric store on Saturday afternoon and took a stroll through the bolts. Bridal was tucked away in the back and as I fingered the lace trims a friendly black cat emerged from the stock room, mewed with a rasp and demanded a scritch. I bought three metres of a fine white polyester tulle along with three metres of a white polyester organza, one metre of Alencon lace trim that had been flip-flopped so that once cut out it would provide two metres of trim, and finally the all-important invisible thread. Once back home I couldn't wait to get started. I managed to very amateurishly gather the organza and then gathered the tulle on top of that, attaching the two layers as I went. I don't pretend that I am doing this the 'correct' way but it looks pretty good to my eye. Fun fact: don't work with these fabrics if you are near a heat register when the furnace is blowing. The static cling that will be generated will be enough to cause sparks! I took the thing upstairs with me and put the gathered edge in a pants hanger and did a perfunctory steam press. I already love it. Next step will be to cut a curve on the straight bottom edge of each layer. I have a vague clue but I am not sure how to get a nice shallow curve that will be consistent on the two layers. The tulle is about twice as wide as the organza. The rounding of the corners will also complicate the application of the Alencon lace, which is totally linear. I suppose it will be a learning curve!