Wedding dress

These are my parents and grandparents circa 1983-ish (don't honestly know what year it was). I remember my mom telling me that she got so nervous about her wedding that she lost weight and her dress ended up being too big (as evidenced by the fluffy sleeve I suppose).

When I was little, I remember looking at my mother's wedding photos and thinking she was the most beautiful, ethereal creature I'd ever seen. She had a big white veil, and a bunch of flowers, and a man in a bow-tie (who happened to be my father posing as a boy). 

I look at her now, and I see a real person, other than that faerie creature I recall from the photo album of my youth. Young, slightly frightened, unassuming, unmarred by childbirth, cancer, or heartbreak. 

This dress is in a box in the attic at my father's house. It has been in that box since before I was born, and in a strange way, it has become a time capsule of her hopes, dreams, and aspirations. People always joked about how my mom never shut up about my siblings or me, but we were her life. I am a culmination of my mother's love of dance, of drama, of the beauty in the natural and mundane. I am a culmination of the love she had for my father, for my grandparents, for my uncles and cousins. It is through me and my siblings that she lives on.

I am hoping to forgo the dress appointments, I am hoping that with a little love, and a lot of alteration, I can breathe a little life back into a dream my mother once had. 

It is my hope that when I open this box in the attic, that I can put on this outdated taffeta, and see in myself the ethereal, the slightly frightened, the as yet unmarred. If I'm lucky, I'll see a little of her too.