The Wedding Dress
A Vignette
From an image sent in by Steph
By Maryanne Peters

I bought it at a charity shop. They said that it had never been worn. I thought – ‘how sad is that?’. Such a beautiful thing and carrying with it all the dreams of a happy future. Weddings are all about the future. There is talk about the enduring nature of true love, the purpose of marriage being the creation of a family and support into old age .. “Until death doth part us”.

It made me focus on my future. I looked at the dress all wrapped up – such high hopes of joy in the form of silken fabric. I wondered what it might be like to feel the way a bride does on her wedding day.

Wedding days are always about the bride. “Here comes the bride” – the groom is almost irrelevant. All eyes are on her. She is the future. Her life will be changed forever, whereas most grooms (I think) believe that marriage will not change them.

So, what happened to her? “It has never been worn” like the baby shoes in Hemingway’s shortest story. What made her walk away from the promise of happiness? I suppose that I felt that I needed to make this dress mean something.

Quite why I tried to put it on I cannot explain. All that needs to be said is that it did not fit. She was slimmer than me, but not much smaller. I suppose that I realized that it could fit, if I wore the right garment underneath it to give me the right shape. But I folded it up lovingly, and I put it away.

My intention was to give it no further thought – just put it in an old carryon suitcase and put it up on a high shelf. It seemed to have no purpose, but then buying it was the same – why?

I lost some weight. I didn’t bother cutting my hair. Whether that was prompted by a desire to try the dress on again I cannot say. What I can say is that the second time I tried on the dress, I was wearing a corset and it fitted perfectly.. I took a photo of myself in it. No, not that photo. In the first photo I looked like a thin, disheveled man wearing a wedding dress. I looked better in the second, but not a whole better. It took many more times putting on the dress before I looked like I do in that photo.

I suppose that when I decided to color my hair people around me knew that something had changed, even though the hormones had come well before that happened. People asked me whether I was transitioning to living as a woman. Strangely, I did not have an answer. I used to say that I was “looking for answers” or even “transitioning to happiness”. I suppose that I was just trying to find a way to channel the joy and hope that a bride should feel on her special day.

That is what the dress meant to me.

After that photo was taken, I only wore it one more time.

I met a man. It was a total surprise. When all this started I suppose I assumed that my future would be with a woman, but that is not what happened. I told him about the pictures, but he refused to look at them. He said that he understood that it was bad luck.

“I’ll see you wear it on our wedding day,” he said.

He did. Now it is back where it should be, in the suitcase on the high shelf. I don’t need the dress to dream about a happy future – I am living it.

The End

© Maryanne Peters 2023