Rockin shoes, eh? With the uber-casual attire, they actually pass as any-night going out material. And there's nothing much else to say, except for that skinny gray pants are next on my must-have jeans list. I'll call this outfit, "Drinks with the Gals," because you could have been painting your living room all day and thrown on these shoes and grabbed this clutch seconds before meeting up with them. They won't care that you smell bad and have blue streaks in your hair. They'll just be glad you're there.
Well, Charlotte ties the knot once again, though this time in tradition Jewish style. Before saying "I do," though, she has her share of fretting about it being her second marriage, especially after she sees her old wedding dress still hanging in her closet. It takes her a while to realize that she can celebrate a second wedding just as much as she celebrated the first. On the big day, everything that can go wrong does, and Charlotte is left in tears. Carrie tells her to buck up and see how wonderful she has it--and also tells her that the worse the wedding, maybe the better the marriage. Miranda finally fits into her old "skinny" jeans (in the old sense of the term, meaning the ones we wore in our lean years and keep around for motivation). She rejoices by flirting up a storm. Samantha, in her publicist capacity, tells Smith (she changed his name from Jerry Jerod to Smith Jerod) to broadcast that he's single and not get too attached to her. But when he leaves to do a movie shoot, she finds herself missing him. Carrie laments over Burger's abrupt breakup via post-it note. To get over it, she sleeps with the best man in Charlotte's wedding and ends up with a bad back from "jackrabbit sex," as she calls it.
As episodes go by, and I write about these characters and their situations every couple of days, I see interesting patterns. One I'm noticing lately is that no matter how much I think I relate to Carrie and her interests in writing, relationships, and shoes, a lot of my actions coincide more with Charlotte. At least my dating history is very similar. I, too, have been in relationships since I was 14 without much break in between any of them. I, too, have always felt insecure by myself and been in search of a mate to make me happy, even if I know I should rely on myself for happiness. I also have tried very hard with all the wrong kinds of guys, always assuming that there's something more I can give, always in danger of giving too much. Like her, I have converted for boyfriends--even if it was to vegetarianism and not Judaism. Granted I've never been married, but I've sure had to face the ghosts of wedding dresses past.
The first time I was engaged--to Arnold--I wanted the whole shebang on our wedding day. I didn't really want a ton of people, but I wanted things to be perfect. I went to Ace to pick up paint color pallets and spent weeks deciding what combos I liked best. I handmade all the invitations. I tore out about a hundred pictures of wedding dresses from magazines, dreaming of the ideal one, and so on. In the end, I decided to wear my mother's wedding dress as a tribute to my history (in my mind, that dress signified the perfect choice). After all, it fit me perfectly without any needed alterations.
Months after I cancelled the wedding, I visited my parent's house and saw my mother's dress still hanging on the closet door in my old bedroom, still in a plastic bag, still unworn except for that one, hot, August day in 1975. It was like an invisible bride had been hung there and forgotten. As a matter of fact, when I was there for Christmas this year, now six years that first cancelled wedding, it hadn't moved. I'm not even sure it has been touched.
The next time I officially got engaged (I no longer count the times I thought I was going to marry someone, for there are far to many), this time to Jorge, I decided I would buy my dream wedding dress right off. After all, that was the best part of the wedding planning process in my mind, and I had skipped it last time. I got one from David's Bridal on sale for $500, and it was gorgeous, even perfect. It had a halter neckline, a sheath body made entirely of beaded lace, and an elegant satin sash around the waist. There were days I would take it out of its garment bag just to stare at it.
After I refused to send invitations for that wedding, in effect canceling it (or as I liked to think "indefinitely postponing"--canceling was too harsh a term), I tried to forget about the dress, the symbol of yet another failed relationship in my mind. Perhaps unconsciously, I brought it to my parents' house and hung it next to my mother's old one, just to get it out of my small apartment. Now there were two invisible brides.
Last year, when I met Hank and before I moved to Denver to live with him, I decided I had to get rid of the dress I loved so much but that haunted me. I would put it up for sale on Ebay. I packed it up from my parents' house and brought it to my apartment, where I photographed it from twenty angles. I also snapped shots of the shoes I had bought for the occasion (Stewart Weiztman rhinestone jelly flats as a throwback to my childhood) and all the accessories that came with the dress. I put up all the photos on the same day I started advertising my apartment.
After a week, no one had bought the dress. I was dissapointed. It was so beautiful, and I had priced it at $200, which I thought was a steal for an unworn, unaltered, beaded lace wedding dress. I decided to take the dress and its entourage to Denver with me, where I would attempt to sell them all at a consignment store. On the move down with my father, I tried to ignore the oddly shaped, unlabeled box that contained the odd relics of my past and hoped he wouldn't ask me about it.
About a month later, I hadn't thought much about the dress. On a whim I decided to repost it on Ebay. This time, I amped up all of my pictures and wrote an ad about the dress that made it sound irresistable. Sure enough, I got a hit. Within a week, I had sent it off to a woman in Florida, who had been looking for the perfect dress for her upcoming wedding and knew she had found it the moment she saw my ad. It was official. My dress--no longer my dress--was gone. And I had nothing left to show for my engagements. It felt wonderful. And it felt sad.
There is a moment in one of the episodes where Charlotte says she doesn't feel like having a big celebration again. She doesn't think it's proper. After all, it's her second wedding, and she has already had the bridesmaids and the flowers and the perfect dress. This time around, she says, she feels she should have a small and simple wedding. But Carrie won't have it. She tells Charlotte to go for it--to celebrate this marriage the way she wants to, with all the excitement and vigor and pomp, even if she has gone through it all before. So she does.
I know how Charlotte feels. I almost feel like I know how divorced women feel. The only things that really separated me from being one were a couple of stupid pieces of paper and a single wedding day. I went through all of the motions. I just didn't take the vows. And while that's an important difference, all the stuff leading up to the vows seems almost more important and harder to forget--like planning a honeymoon with someone you're planning on spending the rest of your life with, asking people to be bridesmaids, and making invitations with your family.
But do I want a simple and small wedding when the time comes for me to finally say, "I do?" No, I don't. I still have dreams of the great dress and shoes, of an amazing cake, of being surrounded by friends and family and good music, of having a night out with my sisters the night before, of writing my vows and saying them to the person I love most in the world. In fact, I'm going to take my cue from Charlotte: if something is worth celebrating, celebrate it. It doesn't matter what came before.
I hope you'll be back. I will.
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