I'm a two-dress bride.

If you had asked me a year and a half ago, I would have told you that women who buy two or more dresses to wear to their wedding (aside from those with cultural reasons for doing so) are vain and wasteful. Well now I am a big, fat, vain, wasteful, and hypocritical bride.

At some point after I began dress fittings last spring, I started worrying about how my dress was going to hold up during the reception. First of all, it is made from somewhat delicate antique lace. Add to that the fact that Mike and I are dancing the rumba for our first dance, and that the rest of the night will include a lot of swing (more on our band later), and I have some serious concerns that it will make it though intact. I know many brides would just say c'est la vie, but not only was my gown pretty expensive, I would like my daughters or even granddaughters to have the option of wearing it one day. So I started looking for a second dress.

Originally I was just thinking of a short sundress or cocktail dress in white or ivory. I only wanted to spend about $300 or less. I wanted it to be fun and a little swing-y on the bottom for dancing.



I had a lot of options, but they either seemed too casual, or they weren't available in my size, or they were too expensive. And then it was just too late and I decided not to worry about it. After the drama that surrounded our wedding, I didn't want to think about it for awhile (which is a shame because I probably missed a lot of end-of-summer sales). But once I started thinking (or re-thinking) about our wedding (or renewal) again, I started thinking about a second dress again. Of course, by then it was fall, so my short white dress options were a little more limited. But then I saw this Nicole Miller online:

Yesterday, I took a trip into the city with a friend, so I stopped by the Nicole Miller in SoHo and tried it on. I love this dress. Even though they only had an 8 for me to try on (which didn't come close to fitting), and it was a little more than I wanted to spend, I ordered it. It has been discontinued, so I didn't want to wait and see if something better would come along. And of course, I managed to justify it to myself.

I have been feeling a lot of sadness and frustration about the wedding lately. I know that I am incredibly fortunate to get a do-over, but I can't help feeling down that, no matter what, it won't be the way I always dreamed. I am afraid that even if everything is superficially exactly the same for the renewal, it won't have the excitement that I would have had on our actual wedding day. I think, in a way, this dress makes me feel like I get something new and exciting for this day. So that may be selfish, or vain, or wasteful, or something else, but it's where I am right now. We'll see how I feel when the dress comes in at the end of January.