Frocks

Today

I went to a wedding yesterday. Paul had offered the Bentley to the Bride's mother, so we drove over to the Bride's tiny house as the rain clouds gathered. In the house there were the Bride, seven bridesmaids, a pageboy, a makeup artist and the parents of the bride. Four of the bridesmaids were fully-grown women of considerable stature and the bride was no midget, either. As we squeezed in the front door the coat rack crashed to the floor, taking some plaster with it.

The Bride, wearing nothing but a white bustier, tracksuit bottoms and her veil, greeted us loudly. Given the chaos, the obvious thing to do was to get stuck in; sorting out the little ones' tiaras, stitching up bits of the Bride's dress, shoe-horning the chief bridesmaid into her dress and drinking champagne.

Eventually we all set off, in the right order, with only a little of the Bride's voluminous train catching some mud on the hem.

In My Day

My sister Beatrice was married, at the age of eighteen, at All Saints' Church, Upper Norwood. This was a very do-it-yourself affair and I had been given the responsibility for making the Bride and bridesmaids' outfits. Like yesterday's bride, Beatrice was not petite, and I came up with a Russian theme for the affair (well, I was at theatre design college at the time). I made Beatrice a full-length, ivory wild silk dress, with a high collar and many-many silk-covered buttons down the front and along the deep cuffs of the sleeves. The bridesmaids wore peasant style outfits with hand-embroidered blouses, waistcoats and skirts.

These affairs are never without their cliff-hanger moments; I was running out of time on the skirt embroidery so Mamma completed one - I can always tell which because she slightly overdid the tension.

My flatmate Sue, trained in theatrical millinery, agreed to make the headdresses. I sent her the fabric and money for the additional bits and pieces. The wedding approached; no sign of the headdresses. I couldn't get hold of Sue on the phone. The night before, I hastily stitched some snoods which I thought would do. I abandoned all hope of finishing my own dress and whizzed up to Crystal Palace to buy one.

At one in the morning Mamma stitched flowers onto the muff which Beatrice was having instead of a bouquet.

The morning of the wedding arrived, along with the postman, who bore a large box containing the headdresses. Three wonderful Russian-styles creation were revealed and pinned onto the Bride and maids and my snoods were put aside.

The final cliffhanger moment was also to do with dresses. Beatrice arrived at the church before the choir (consisting of me, brother David and friends Frances and Gregory) had fully assembled, because Frances was also trying to finish a hastily cobbled-together dress and had ended up fixing the hem with Sellotape. She and David dashed in, about a quarter of an hour late, while Beatrice sat in the church porch, waiting patiently until we could sing her in.

While I can see the attraction of one's wedding arrangements operating like a well-oiled machine, it's often the more home-spun elements that bring back the memories most vividly.