Weddingbee Blog

Once upon a time I thought I had a pretty good handle on the whole wedding dress situation. I was not shopping for a dress, I had a pattern, a seamstress, some fantastic fabric swatches and even a fitting under my belt. Smooth sailing and blue skies ahead. No worries in the world.

In fact, one could say that I was feeling a bit smug over the whole thing. I had cut all the stress out of wedding dress shopping. It was nothing but perfect, custom made fun for this Aardvark! The only major thing left to do was order the fabric I had so carefully selected months ago and wait for January to roll around for my first real dress fitting (as opposed to muslin). Easy peasy lemon squeezy right?

Wrong.

Today, I thought I would bop onto Fabric.com for a quick sec and order up my fabric. Welp hive, fate had other plans. The beautiful dupioni silk I had been fantasizing about since, ohhhh June, was out of stock! That’s right! my beautiful UK-591 was GONE. 0 yards in stock. And the runner up fabric, my second choice, only 12 yards left. I know 12 yards is a lot, but it’s not quite the 17 my dress will be needing (yes, just wait, it will knock your socks off, as long as I get fabric for it!). I sent a slightly panicked email to my seamstress, took a deep breath and started looking for alternatives. I got another set of swatches ordered from a new website within 15 minutes or so. I would not quite say the crisis was averted, but I was feeling like I had a handle on things. On top of all this there was the fact that I may or may not have been at work where a full-blown bridal meltdown may (or may not) have been frowned upon.

I told myself everything would be OK. I reminded myself of what MOH MD had said when my first bridal crisis of not know which shoes to wear came up. “Aardvark, let’s define ’Bridal Crisis’. Mr. Aardvark dying, Mr. Aardvark changing his mind about the wedding, that’s about it. Shoes are not on this list.” (See why I love her?) This was not either of these two things, but it was a bigger deal than shoes, for sure. I figured I would come home and order the liner fabric. My thought was this would at least help me feel like I was getting something done.

Having studied textiles in school and working in the apparel industry has not done good things for my already snob-prone self. I had decided that I wanted all natural fibers for my dress and had found a lovely silk/cotton blend that would be a perfect liner for my dress. I had very carefully sifted through my various white swatches to find the one that best matched UK-59. Can you guess what happened next? I logged on and guess what was out of stock? Yep! My first choice liner fabric! Could nothing go right?! (OK, maybe that was a bit over dramatic, but really!?)

On the left is my first choice the other two are A) too white and B) too ivory. What? You can’t tell?? OK, here’s a better picture.

At this point, I may or may not have had a full blown pout-party. I tossed my B-is-for-better attitude out the window. I came this close to full-on crying. Never mind the fact that I had not yet heard back from the seamstress (meaning we may have time to wait for all the fabric to come back into stock). Never mind the fact that a whole pile of new swatches would be at my door in two days. Never mind the fact that this was fabric for the liner i.e. the inside of the dress and as long as it wasn’t, say, acid green, no one would be able to see it. None of this mattered at this point. All that mattered was that my picture perfect dress plan was unraveling (ahhh puns make everything better).

Mr. Aardvark was very sweet about the whole thing. He didn’t try to point out the logical arguments stated above because he knew I would figure them out eventually. He just gave me a big hug and made me dinner and reassured me that everything would be alright.

I ordered some new liner swatches and loads of tulle for veil and flower girl projects and called it a night. I had time. I could use rush shipping if I needed to. Everything would be OK. I would hold my horses, wait until I hear from the seamstress, and take a chill pill.

Did you hit a totally unexpected roadblocks with your dress? What, despite reason, was a big moment of panic for you in your wedding planning?