Wedding Blog

I’ve always been a rule follower. Always. It never mattered how ridiculous or petty the rule might be, I’m going to follow it. At least to the best of my ability.

When we started planning the wedding and I realized that it was taking a very, very traditional route, I knew I had to do something to “buck tradition”. It’s not like I could get married in the church in a pink gown. I wanted to wear a traditional gown; I just wanted to have a little fun with it.

The first time I saw a bride with colored shoes, I was in love. I was determined to have colored shoes.

All images courtesy of Project Wedding

Back when our colors were sage and burgundy, I ordered these…

…and they were hot but really really tall, and not terribly comfortable. And honestly, how was I ever going to break those in? I bought the same pair in black to get my feet used to wearing heels that high. But in the end, we ended up changing our color scheme (again and again) and so I returned the red shoes. (But, I did keep the black ones, and they are one of my favorite, favorite pair of heels.)

I finally decided it would be a smarter plan to buy dyables and have them dyed whatever color we ultimately decided on. And I chose these, which match my dress the best:

Melissa Sandal from Liz Renee Couture. Aren’t they awesome? And they are actually remarkably comfortable. I intend to have them dyed pink.

Then I discovered colored crinolines. And then I was double in love.

(1, 2, 3)

I especially love the third one! She must have made that one; it would be way to hard to dye that thing)

So, I purchased a really cheap crinny off Ebay. That way if I messed it up really bad, I wouldn’t have ruined a $60 crinny.

I decided to go with a pink crinny, something about the shade of that first picture up there. I bought two bottles of rose pink Rit dye and a bottle of fixer. I was afraid my cheapo crinny might be 100% polyester. I followed all the directions on the Rit Dye bottle.

Here’s my daughter keeping watch over the washing machine.

You can see my industrial strength rubber gloves there on the dryer. I got kinda tired of putting them on and taking them off, plus I kept sticking my arms too far into the washer and flooding my gloves with pink dye.

After 4 cycles, two rinses, two bottles of dye, and 1/2 a bottle of fixer, this is what I got.

In all honesty, it looks better in those pictures than it does in real life. Maybe it’s the blue walls in that room. It’s just barely pink. Under my champagne colored gown, it looks sick, like I-need-to-be-admitted-to-the-hospital-sick. And I hate the way the trim is way pinker than the rest of the thing.

Big enormous sad face for me.

I got back on the internet and read the directions on Rit dye’s website and discovered my fears were justified. My crinny is 100% polyester (which is abhorrent by the way; I’m a fiber snob) and is not likely to hold dye.

So, I spent $32.80 on the crinny and about $15 on the dye. $47.80 down the drain in my opinion. It can’t be worn as it is.

What do y’all think I should do with this thing? Another round of dye, just to see what happens? Or should I put it into the community box in our reenacting unit and look for another crinny, one less polyester and more natural?