Like everything else, It Just Depends - depends on the gown, depends on the woman, depends on her comfort level.

I myself just turned 37 and I am retiring my short skirts (that is, hems more than a few inches above the knee) while I still have good legs. I don’t want to turn into that 40-ish woman who dresses like *thinks* she can still pass for 20-something. No thanks. Her friends may tell her how young she looks, but to actual 20-somethings, she looks like a middle-aged woman in a young girl’s clothes. I may be lean and athletic, but I am also a grown up lady, not an ingenue, and wish to look the part.

But, in good news, I found my dress! You can see me in all its ill fitted bungy cord wearing glory here:

http://www.knittergail.com/gallery/v/justsilly/weddress/

It was literally the only dress in the salon with long sleeves. The factory will have to shorten them for me - partly because of the embellishment, and partly because this busy, large bridal salon hasn’t had to alter long sleeves for well over a year. They are that out of style. I had 7 dresses to choose from with any sort of sleeve at all - its lucky I fell in love with that dress.

My dress is so princessy and stereotypical, but I adored it the second I put it on.

So, still feeling all glowy.

This will take you to at least one wedding dress with sleeves. And I’m still trying to figure out why a woman in her 40’s is going to “just going to look like a middle-aged woman trying to be 25″ instead of looking like a woman in her 40’s in a low-cut dress. I wouldn’t wear it as a wedding dress, but I know a number of women in their 40’s who would look their age AND look good in it - and they’re sure as heck not flat, either.

Gail, I love the idea of a little jackety-thing. Beautiful, and ten times more comfortable than exposing areas about which you feel less-than-confident. And elegant in a very honestly-vintage, 30’s sort of way.)

This dress is lovely, but would make me so darn self-conscious that I’d sweat like a pig and never be able to be completely at ease the entire day, even with double-stick tape running the full length of the bodice on both sides. But the lines of it totally remind me of John Singer Sargent’s painting of Madame X. I think it’s the deep, curving plunge. Scandalous!