Belles, bubbles and...ballet?

As I said last week, guys can surprise you. They will have opinions on things that you’d never expect and then be completely unconcerned about other issues.

The wedding dress is one of those things. I never expected MM to care much about what I’d wear, short of seeing me in some sort of dress on The Day. Being a typical Canadian guy, I didn’t think MM would really have many opinions one way or another of how I should look.

Yet again, I was wrong.

He caught a glimpse of my computer screen the day after our wedding planning chat. I was browsing a few of the big Internet bridal dress retailers, and had one dress in particular zoomed up on my browser window.

MM: “what IS that?”

Me: “Um.. it’s a wedding dress?”

MM: “What? Really? Where is the rest of it?”

Me: “Rest of it? What do you mean?”

MM: “There is no top on it!”

Now, this dress I was looking at was no Vegas-themed cut-down-to-there and slit-up-to-there sexy backless and short number. By today’s bridal dress standards, it was pretty normal. Done in pale gold silk taffeta, it had a strapless sweetheart beaded bodice, shirred waist, trumpet skirt with swirls of embroidery at one hip and along the hem and a lace-up corset back with chapel length train.

Somehow though, this fairly standard and current wedding dress style bothered MM. His “no top” comment was my key to understanding this newly perplexed man.

Me: “No top? Oh… you mean it’s strapless?”

MM: “Yeah. Strapless is slutty. Whatever happened to modesty at weddings?”

MM then looked directly at my face, down to my chest, then back to my face, ending up staring once again at the dress on my computer screen.

I got the confusion. Given that I’m busty, I too have worried about how I’d keep the girls “locked and loaded” as they say on one of my fave TV shows, What Not To Wear) in a strapless gown. But I’d seen plenty of wedding pics online by then to know that somehow women manage. I’d also read the stats in the wedding magazines that said something around 80% of gowns made today for brides were strapless. But, while I, too, found it a bit odd, I don’t think I found it as scandalous as MM apparently did.

Since then, he’s looked at dozens of dresses with me, online and in magazines. He’s commented on many of them, in very vocal terms, and he apparently has a whole repertoire of ways to describe female bridal fashion.

For a silky slinky charmeuse number:
“Too nightgown-y”.

For a full skirt confection made of multiple layers of tulle:
“Wow! ballet princess”.

Upon assessing a gown with gathered pickups all over the skirt:
“Why is the skirt torn up like that? Or … dented? Yeah, dented… it looks like iron kept getting caught in all that material. What is the deal with that?”

For a very lacey A-line with full crinolines underneath:
“Looks like a knitted toilet roll cover, like grandmas make”.

While I laughed at more than a few of these observations of his, they also stuck with me. Now, as I head out today to try on wedding dresses for the first time at a Maggie Sottero trunk show, I’m going to have a little MM devil on my shoulder, giving me a running guy commentary on each dress as they show it to me or try to coax me into it.

And I’m going to be worried about straplessness and whether anyone will notice the colour of my eyes or my earrings if I wear a strapless gown.

Thanks luv.

Photo credit: Toilet doll by Etsy seller lkscraftcreations