Reverse Culture Shock

My wedding dress is officially gone. After a week of harassing our contact at the estate agent’s in London, we found out that the new tenant remembers seeing the big beige box containing the dress – and throwing it out.

She claimed she thought the box was full of papers. True, the dress was wrapped in tissue paper. Perhaps she could have looked a little more closely, but of course, we shouldn’t have left it behind.

I called the local government office, the landfill, and the porters, and they all said the same thing: “There is no hope.”

I found a spare set of spare keys to our old flat, and briefly considered using them to get into the flat when we visit London, just to make sure it isn’t there. My Dad, who is a lawyer, said this would be considered breaking and entering. I disagreed, telling him that because I have a key, I would not actually be breaking in. Obviously, if I got caught, I would use a different lawyer.

As exciting as a stealth non-break in would be, I am starting to realize that the dress is gone for good. It served me well. I wore it to two weddings: our official one in New York, in October, 2004, then again at a reception for our British friends and family in Birmingham, England.

Luckily, the dress was one of the cheaper ones for sale at Kleinfeld, the bridal emporium, back when it was only in Brooklyn. This loss might be a bit tougher to stomach if I had broken the bank. I wonder if there are any Vera Wangs in the landfill in Essex….

It was the second dress I tried on. I knew it was the right one, because both my mother and my maid of honor burst into tears when they saw me in it.

But I’ve never a huge dress person. When I told the Financial Times’s Fashion Editor I was engaged, she replied: “What are you wearing?” It took me a moment to figure out that she was talking about the dress I would wear to my wedding, and then another moment to say: “I don’t know.”

Kleinfeld cunningly cuts out brand tags so you can’t look for that same dress elsewhere. After that embarrassing interlude with the FT editor, I did some homework, and discovered: it was Pronovias, a Spanish brand, which features old school, billowy dresses that aren’t too cream puff.

While I wish my mother were here, so I could talk to her about this whole episode, I am glad for her sake that she doesn’t have to go through the emotional turmoil. Or a possible trip to a landfill in East London…..