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I thought buying a wedding dress would go something like this: I would walk into a dress shop, armed with respectable undergarments, and know exactly what I was looking for. I would emerge from the dressing room wearing something that appeared tailor-made for my body; no need for those clamps that dangle off me like I’m the world’s most expensive bag of half-eaten potato chips. I would stand on my little stage, and soak in the single biggest life event on my horizon.
That was a lie.
The night my partner and I decided to get married, we were hunched over a laptop, working on my visa application. I’m American, he’s Australian, and we were moving to Sydney in a few months’ time. We were staring down all the layers of overturned topsoil that come with uprooting our entire lives and relocating across the world. We were sure of each other, but also wanted something to help tie us together amid the deluge of immigration forms.
My parents got married at Manhattan City Hall decades prior, when, as my father puts it, my mother demanded they marry before they had a second baby out of wedlock. I come from this lineage, of love first and paperwork second. My wedding would be no different.
The two of us threw on the phrase “fiancé” as if we were running out the door with one arm still dangling out of our jackets. We decided to tie the knot on a Monday afternoon, a little over two months out. Eight weeks was just enough time for our relatives to insist that us eloping without them was off the table. We would get married at City Hall then walk the Brooklyn Bridge, just as my parents had done, and celebrate afterwards with pizza and beer. We ordered pies from all of our favorite New York pizzerias, called our loved ones, and marriage got added to our packing list.
Weddings seem to have a way of financially pitting our present against our future. With two big life events packed so close together, “now” and “later” felt even more at odds. Whatever I bought today was immediately headed for a cardboard box I was paying for tomorrow. I wanted whatever I bought for this wedding to be a carry-on item. But none of the packable dresses I ordered online felt quite right. “I wish I could just wear a T-shirt,” I texted my friend as I headed out the door to return yet another round of failed attempts.
Eventually I caved, and begrudgingly went to a bridal shop near my apartment. The shop manager filled her arms with options, the only things I could walk out of the store with that day. There was no time for special-order anything. These dresses all looked the way they were supposed to—lacey and beautiful, bohemian and low-key. But whenever my big sister offered up a compliment, my heart yapped back like a tiny chihuahua.
The manager suggested one last piece to try: a skirt, instead of a dress. Something far bigger, far wedding-ier than I ever would have imagined for myself. Sensing my hesitation around the poof, she offered a compromise. “I’ve always wanted a bride to wear this with a T-shirt.” My heart bubbled back up to the surface.
I asked my sister to run back to the house to grab the pajama shirt I left crumpled up on my bed. It was my grandfather’s XXL undershirt that I rescued before my step-grandma turned it into rags a few years back. She handed over the shirt, and I tied a droopy knot the way I do with all my t-shirts, for they are all grandpa rags with a dream.
There was something about this combo—the outrageousness of it, the smashing together of two clothing items that are meant to be separated, the soft cotton against a tangle of tulle—that felt exactly right. I laughed with giddiness at recognizing myself in the mirror.
If I was going to horrify my older relatives by wearing a T-shirt to my own wedding—they had taken to using the word “unusual” as the politest possible response to my forewarnings of this outfit—I owed them the simple mercy of making it a clean one. Soon, I was introduced to the intricacies of the most hauntingly simple item in the American wardrobe. I learned I had strong feelings about pockets and collar thickness. I wrote up some legal briefs for the much-debated case of Cream vs. Ivory. I researched the antique looming process of the shirts the hot chef wears on Hulu. Unable to wrangle my poof all around the shops of midtown Manhattan, I purchased a few options, and hoped one of them would work the morning of when I had people to button me in.
Next, I needed shoes. Shoes that wouldn’t make me want a divorce halfway across the Brooklyn Bridge. Because marriage seems more about the long walks you take together after the wedding day than the short one down the aisle, I decided to kick it off with comfortable shoes.
Subway rides became my fashion show for practical dad sneakers. (Carroll Gardens always promised the best New Balances; Adidas once we got to West 4th.) My big sister informed me that Reeboks were now lame, and so Nike it was. I ordered a pair and tacked on a pack of multi-color socks for free shipping. And with that, I found my something blue.
The shoes arrived. So did our wedding day. I slipped on my T-shirt and sneakers, then swirled myself into my marshmallow fluff. My sister handed me a bouquet that she made herself after a weekend of YouTube watching. My husband was the last one to arrive because he went to the wrong City Hall building.
We walked inside, and joined our place in line with the other brides and grooms and grooms and grooms and jean-wearing middle-aged couples with kids. Seeing us all together was like spotting multiple Elmos on the same corner in Times Square. We tore off a deli number, and readied ourselves for an order of thinly-sliced paperwork. Our number was called. Within minutes, we were married.
As we crossed the Brooklyn Bridge, cars whirred below us. Some honked to cheer us on, while the truest New Yorkers gruffed that we were taking up the whole damn sidewalk. I loved this mix of reactions. Even more, I loved the way my outfit was able to greet them all accordingly. This mix-and-match pairing carried me through the day exactly as I needed, as both a bride and a commuter—which is, in fact, how this all began.