Diary of a Mad Bride (17 page)

P
eople keep asking if I'm going to change my name. As if my decision will help them to define who I am. If I change my name I'm a family-oriented wife. If I keep my name I'm an aggressive professional with a frosty interior. And if I hyphenate? I'm just plain stupid. It sounds old-fashioned, but you'd be amazed by how we cling, consciously or not, to these stereotypes.

So what's a girl to do? On the one hand everyone in this industry knows me as Amy Thomas.
²⁷
But on the other hand Stephen thinks it'd be nice for our kids to share the same name as their parents.

I'm assuming he doesn't mean Thomas.

I
t was parent-teacher conference day, so my mom was free by 1
P.M.
After she did some shopping in the city we met for dinner at T.G.I. Friday's. We always eat at T.G.I. Friday's, because it's well priced and the portions are large. My mother's criteria for a good meal. Value and size.

This explains so much about my wedding dilemmas.

Unwilling to appear paranoid or selfish, I went out of my way not to mention Gram. Instead we talked about the parents who refused to believe that their kids are nose-pickers, chronic potty mouths, or attention deficit. Inevitably the parents themselves are nose-pickers, potty mouths, or attention deficit. This always fascinates my mother, so she was in a particularly good mood. In fact, she was downright effusive. She even brought up my wedding.

Over Cobb salad and minestrone soup she asked if I'd found a caterer (I haven't), if I'd chosen a florist (I haven't), and if I had a dress yet (I don't). “You know, Amy, this may sound old-fashioned to you, but I still have the dress I wore when I married your father.” News to me.

“The day you were born I did two things. I decided to name you Amy after my favorite of all the Little Women—well, actually Beth was my favorite, but she dies in the end and that didn't seem right—then I packed my wedding dress into a box in case the day came when you'd want to wear it. I saved it especially for you.”

Finally, some mother-daughter bonding! It was my
Terms of Endearment
moment.
²⁸
I was shocked. “I'd
love
to wear your wedding dress!”

I
actually slept well last night. Since my mother offered me her wedding dress I feel like an enormous weight has been lifted from my shoulders. Her very own wedding dress. It's a token of her affection, it's family history. And it's a lucky charm—my parents have been happily married for over thirty years.

May we all be so fortunate.

And there's even more good news. One of Stephen's coworkers has a brother who's a freelance newspaper photographer but wants to expand into wedding photography. Since he needs to build his portfolio he's agreed to shoot our wedding for free! All we pay for is the film and the processing and the printing! No overly precious, able-to-withstand-nuclear-fallout $15 prints, and he'll give us the negatives!

A wedding dress. A photographer. Next thing you know I'll find shoes!

I
went shoe shopping at Bendel's after work. I found nothing.

Official THINGS TO DO List

1. Choose wedding date

2. Tell boss wedding date

3. Vacation time for honeymoon

4. Decide on honeymoon

5. Get minister

6. Choose reception venue

7. Make guest list

8. Choose maid of honor

9. Choose best man

10. Register for gifts

11. Arrange for engagement party

12. Buy engagement ring

13. Buy wedding rings

14. Buy wedding dress

15. Buy maid of honor dress

16. Order wedding cake

17. Hire caterer

18. Hire band for reception

19. Order flowers for ceremony

20. Buy shoes

21. Plan rehearsal dinner

22. Invites to rehearsal dinner

23. Hire musicians for ceremony

24. Decide on dress code

25. Get marriage license

26. Hire videographer

27. Hire photographer

28. Order table flowers

29. Order bouquets

30. Order boutonnieres for men

31. Order nosegays for women

32. Order invitations

33. Decide on wine selection

34. Postage for invitations

35. Choose hairstyle and makeup

36. Buy gifts for attendants

37. Buy thank-you notes

38. Announce wedding in newspaper

39. Buy headpiece

40. Buy traveler's checks for honeymoon

41. Apply for visas

42. Get shots and vaccinations

43. Order tent if necessary

44. Order chairs/tables if necessary

45. Make budget

46. Divide expenses

47. Make table-seating charts

48. Choose bridesmaid dress

49. Decide on menu

50. Decide on hors d'oeuvres

51. Decide on dinner-service style

52. Decide on staff-guest ratio

53. Decide seated or buffet

54. Reserve vegetarian meals

55. Reserve band/photographer/videographer meals

56. Make photo list

57. Choose hotel for wedding night

58. Hire limo for church-reception transport

59. Buy guest book for reception

60. Find hotel for out-of-towners

61. Decide on liquor selection

62. Hire bartenders

63. Verify wheelchair accessibility

64. Choose processional music

65. Choose recessional music

66. Choose cocktail music

67. Choose reception music

68. Choose ceremony readings

69. Prepare birdseed instead of rice

70. Schedule manicure/pedicure/wax

I
took the train upstate right after work to go see my mom's—my—wedding dress. I'd originally planned to go tomorrow morning, but I couldn't wait. I was on the 7
P.M.
train.

I found my parents sitting down to watch a rerun of
Diagnosis Murder.
My father had already slipped into his pajamas. But that didn't matter. This moment was about us girls. It was a female thing.

Bursting with excitement, I followed my mother to her bedroom and into her closet—a place forever off-limits to my sister and me. Consequently a place forever filled with mystery and intrigue. As kids, Nicole and I spent hours speculating about what lay behind that closet door: boxes brimming with dazzling jewels, a safe filled with the family fortune, love letters from my mother's
previous
husband—a tall, dark figure whom my sister and I had inexplicably
conjured up. A man who looked like Humphrey Bogart and took my mother to smoky bars where they swore. Even as adults we weren't allowed into that closet. And yet here I was, being shepherded in by my mother herself.

Shepherded into what had to be the world's most claustrophobic space. Crammed with shoes, clothing, old luggage, and forgotten sporting gear, it was poorly lit and smelled like mothballs. It was, indeed, our family's fortune. And from the back, under a pile of ancient
Good Housekeeping
magazines and some knit jumpers from the early eighties, my mom unearthed an enormous cardboard box. It was the box in which she'd kept her wedding dress, for decades, in hopes that one day
I
might wear it.

Together we carried the box to her bed. My heart was pounding. My mother lifted the lid and began gently to pull back layer upon layer of yellowed tissue paper.

Then, when the final layer of tissue paper was finally removed, I saw my wedding dress—and wept. Really wept. Not delicate girlie tears, but the kind of tears reserved for occasions of monumental joy. And horror. It was the ugliest thing I'd ever seen in my entire life. And it was all mine.

Not wishing to insult my mother, I quickly repacked the dress in its enormous cardboard box and took the next train home. Maybe, if I was lucky, I'd be robbed at gunpoint.

I
can't sleep. When I close my eyes all I can see is that horrible dress—the high collar, the flowing sleeves, the pinafore front, and the hooplike skirt. I look like a cross between a
Little House on the Prairie
extra and a cast member from the road company of
Godspell.

It suddenly occurs to me that the photos of my mother at her wedding are shot exclusively in close-up.

Is there any way to get out of this without forever destroying the mother-daughter bond?

I
left a desperate message for Mandy this morning. She still hasn't called me back.

Meanwhile I returned home to a message on my answering machine from Gram. We haven't spoken since my engagement party and I'm not sure whether anyone's told her about my suspicions. In either event, her message was very sweet. Or was it?

“Amy, your mother's just told me that you're going to wear her wedding dress. I'm so pleased. I thought of that dress the minute I heard about your engagement. That's why I urged her to offer it to you.”

So that's how all this started. My mom assumed I wouldn't want her dress, but GRAM convinced her to offer it to me.

A well-intentioned bad idea or a setup? Should I worry, or seek psychiatric attention for advanced stages of paranoia? It's so hard to tell these days.