Page 115 of The Wedding Dress Repair Shop
‘Romantic!’ said Thom sardonically.
‘Put it in there – the more the merrier,’ said Honey in-appropriately, then hummed a snatch of music.
‘You know, I’d really like to have that Billy Idol song, ‘White Wedding’, playing very quietly in the background in that room.’
I’d listened to that on YouTube after she’d mentioned it before and I really hoped she was joking …
*
The first thing I did next morning was to detach the fabric rose from the charity shop wedding dress, then put the dress in a big net bag and wash it in the machine on a delicate cycle.
I was certain it had been washed once already, but a faint aroma of nicotine hung around it and I wanted to get rid of it. Anyway, it was entirely polyester and I was sure would come out perfectly well.
It was finished by the time Golightly and I had eaten breakfast, and then I hung the dress in the doorway to the utility room to dry.
The pale shape swaying there on a hanger reminded me horribly of the Titania costume …
I’d found a cleaner’s label still pinned inside the gold suit when I got home yesterday, so I’d put it straight into a zipped plastic cover and hung it with the wedding dresses in my storeroom.
I was in love with it! It was so perfect, it might have beenmade for me, and there was no way I’d let this Cassy woman tart it up for her programme!
I had another cup of coffee before starting work, while reading an agitated text that had just arrived from George, who was overseeing the packing-up of the Rosa-May exhibition and fretting about whether everything was ready to receive it here, as if we were expecting visiting royalty.
I reassured him that the room was finished and ready, and then, once the rattle of the cat flap signalled Golightly’s departure into the great outdoors, I went into the museum to find the mannequin for my Titania dress among the many still standing silently in the Rosa-May Room.
There is an art to putting a costume on a mannequin that I was sure George had mastered much better than I had, but with careful easing, the replica gown slid on to it and was fastened – and once it was in its display case, it looked beautiful.
Even if the dresswasfor ever tainted for me by Mirrie’s having worn it, it was still an excellent piece of work!
I placed the laminated information card in its clear Perspex holder in front of it, locked the glass door and thought: one down, thirteen – or perhaps that should be fourteen now, if you included the charity shop dress – to go.
Time to get on with the next …
*
Dress 7
Hippie Wedding
1970
This was a bridal outfit rather than a dress, and had quite a funny story behind it.
The young couple had gone together to the 1970 Isle of Wight pop festival, where, after smoking a lot of pot, they had decided to get married on the grassy slope facing the main stage. A fellow reveller, who claimed to be a minister in some obscure American church, offered to officiate …
The bride and bridegroom wore whatever they happened to have on … or not, in the groom’s case, because he was only wearing jeans, an embroidered headband and a beaded leather thong necklace.
The bride wore frayed, cut-off jeans, a cheesecloth midriff-tie shirt and a brightly flowered kaftan, open down the front like a coat or a dressing gown. She too had an embroidered headband, and her bare feet were decorated with henna.
It was the bride herself who had sent us the clothes – minus the husband’s jeans – and a lovely description of what happened, as well as a photo of the happy couple right afterwards. There was a much more recent snap, too, which I wouldn’t have guessed was the same couple, except for the familiar puckish grin on the wife’s face.
She wrote:
It was a lovely wedding … But afterwards someone suggested we drop some acid … and then the police arrested about fifteen of us and held us in a sort of pen for hours, before they let us go. But it didn’t spoil it, and when we got home again, we had a registry office wedding too. We’re still together and have three children and ten grandchildren, who’ll all be mortified if they ever find out what we got up to in the past!
The cut-off jeans and midriff top had seen some wear, but had been washed and pressed before she sent them. I think thekaftan had just been stored away ever since the wedding, because it was in much better condition and still smelled faintly of patchouli.
The only other things to survive were the two embroidered headbands and the husband’s leather thong necklace, and, rather touchingly, the fragile ring of woven grass, used at the ceremony.
