Weddingbee Blog

I’m fairly certain the makers of my wedding dress never intended it to travel stuffed in a pillowcase. But somehow I had to get my dress from the North Island (where I live for study) to the South (where my family have just moved and where the wedding will be held).

Some well meaning people told me to call the airline ahead because “they will have an area on the plane where garments can be hung.” Hmm. Yeah, they definitely didn’t have those on the two dinky twelve-seater planes I was on. Plus, even in the garment bag, that dress is long. Taller than me, and as I had to transit through one city before finally making it to Nelson, I really didn’t want to be traipsing up and down escalators dragging the white menace behind me.

So I just rolled the dress up (still in its bag… I’m not that ignorant), and stuffed it in one of Mr. E’s pillowcases that I convinced him to part with.

Observe the patient Mr. E carrying the dress for me in the airport at a heinous hour of the morning:

He didn’t come on that flight with me, he was going to follow 2 weeks later, but I made him get up and come anyway. Yeah, he was a tired boy…

Once I was on the plane it was too bulky to go under the seat in front of me, and there were no overhead compartments (yes it was that small), so I kind of squished it between my legs and hoped the air hostess would overlook it. She did. The fisherman across the aisle from me asked me about it though. I told him it was my wedding dress and he brightened up. “The missus and I got married a couple years back,” he said. “Don’t listen to what anyone tells you that you have to do on your wedding day. Just do what you like.” I think I like getting wedding advice from fishermen.

Don’t ask me why, in such a small country like New Zealand, that we had to make a transit stop. After a thirty minute flight. And the weather was bad when we landed at the stop: think pouring icy rain and wind that almost blew me down the steps as I disembarked. Oh, and of course we had to walk across the tarmac to the airport lounge in those conditions. I wish I had photos of me clinging on to that pillowcase for dear life as the wind blew me sideways, but you will just have to use your imagination. The pillowcase and I got soaked, of course.

But fear not. When we landed in Nelson, all was calm and sunny. As soon as we got to the house, I anxiously unzipped that bag, panicking that the dress had also got wet and probably squished to oblivion, but it hadn’t. There it lay, oblivious to what I had just dragged it through, in dry perfection. Don’t ask me how it also managed to stay completely unwrinkled. All’s well that ends well, I guess.

Do you have to transport your dress somehow? What are your plans?