Bride 101

Dreamt last night I was in Bride class.

It was a dress rehearsal for the final project, wherein five of us would actually go through the process of getting married. I was one of the five, chosen by lot.

Since we only had enough class time to marry five students, the rest of the women were to function as Bridesmaids. Thus, each Bridal Party comprised one Study Group.

As everybody in the class was, in theory, a Bride, everyone was in their own special wedding dress.

Looking at all the Wedding~Dress~clad Bridesmaids attending to their Wedding~Dress~clad Brides, I felt something was off...

It suddenly occured me that bridesmaids normally don't wear white; even wedding guests avoid wearing white, so as not to draw attention away from the real bride.

So I made some flippant remark to the Bride in the study group next to mine; I don't remember exactly what, but it was an observation that, technically, it was inappropriate for all of us to be wearing white. It may have even been a joke about how we're all essentially wearing the same dress.*

The emotional temperature in the room dropped. The other Bride to whom I'd spoken barely acknowledged the remark with a tight~lipped little glare, and then ignored me. The other study groups went about their preparations a little more quietly.

We had all entered into this mutual fiction of being Brides, and I had transgressed the suspension of disbelief; it was inexcusably bad~mannered of me, to have pointed out the truth.

~ ~ ~

* I may have paraphrased this quote from Rita Rudner:

Women take clothing much more seriously than men. I've never seen a man walk into a party and say "Oh, my God, I'm so embarrassed; get me out of here. There's another man wearing a black tuxedo."

Posted by edgar at September 5, 2003 02:43 PM