What Started it all?

I blame my mom, it is all her fault that I became absolutely obsessed with weddings when I was in my sophomore year of high school!  Actually, it started way before high school now that I think about it.  I can remember sitting home on a sick day from school and planning my wedding and honeymoon clothes through the JC Penney catalog!  I was  about 14 when that movie came out about the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders.  I can't remember anything about the movie now, but I do remember just assuming that chubby little short me from Kansas would someday be a Dallas Cowboy Cheerleader.  I pictured my wedding to one of our junior high school boys that played football and planned the whole thing that one sick day, while watching the Price is Right and the Young and the Restless.  Me being a Dallas Cowboy Cheerleader and of course he was their quarterback!  I can't even remember who it was that I was thinking about.  It was a memorable day for fashion though I guess.

 But anyway, my mom and I went to every wedding they ever had at our church back in the 70's and 80's.  I was always so impressed by the long white dresses.  And the candles and flowers and all the pretty bridesmaids.  Oh and that friend of a friend who got up there with their guitar and sang so lovingly "If I could save time in a bottle..." or "White lace and promises, a kiss for luck and we're on our way!" I was so impressed! I loved to sing and I so wanted to be up there singing at someones wedding.   And the hats!  Loved seeing brides in those enormous picture hats!  I think that is what someone once called them.  Pastel colors were all the rage back then and our church had yellow windows so if anyone had an early evening wedding you would watch the wedding and see all those light limey green dresses and tuxes and then go downstairs for the reception and wait, what???  They were all in light blue!  The first time that happened I remember thinking they had changed clothes but I was then told about how the windows turned all the blues to greens.  Crazy! And those diamond rings those brides had.  I think I asked them all if I could see their rings as we went through the receiving line.  I can even remember one time one of the grooms pretended to be upset because I didn't ask to see his ring.  I giggled a lot at that I remember.

Then we would get downstairs for the reception - back then almost all the weddings we attended just served cake and punch in the church fellowship hall - and there would be that towering cake covered in the yummiest butter cream with roses and shells and stars and little strings and swirly flowers.  I never heard of Fondant until much later.  Most of the time there were stairs and bridges and a fountain too.  And they always had punch in a matching wedding color.  And those wonderful home made mints.  Then the little napkins with a cute picture and their names and wedding date in foil, I always tried to save those.

So back to my mom being to blame for my obsession with weddings.  I was in 10th grade back in about 1981 when our local newspaper published their annual wedding planning special booklet.  This time my mom told me to look at it.  I never read the paper except the funnies so that was unusual for me.  And there inside that paper was a wedding gown.  Not just any wedding gown but one that made me catch my breath.  It was lace and ruffles and netting and everything I could dream of.  I kept that paper till college and then cut that dress out and put it on a notebook which eventually ripped  but somewhere I still have the top half of that gown.  It looked a lot like these; the top dress was the skirt and the bottom dress was the top and sleeves of that gown.

And from that day on I was completely obsessed with wedding gowns! That is what started it all!