Manolo for the Brides

via Mail Online
This is Helene Manca, now Mrs. Joe Glass. This is one of the nine wedding gowns she wore at her wedding and reception. That’s right, nine wedding gowns in one day.

In point of fact, this is the gown she wore for the ceremony. As the day wore on into the early hours of the next day, she changed her clothes for: her arrival at the reception, cocktail hour, banquet, the speeches, cutting the cake, the first dance, dancing, and the 2:00am disco. Each gown was worn anywhere from a measly thirty minutes to as long as two hours.

How did the lady wind up with so very many wedding gowns? Read on, my friends, read on.

While Glass wore nine gowns on her wedding day, she actually bought a grand total of eighteen wedding gowns. She paid for all but one herself. The other was bought by her parents, who paid the rest of the wedding costs. For the record, the one Helene’s parents bought is the one she wore for her first dance with her husband. It was a Vera Wang which she wore for ninety minutes.

It seems that the lady just couldn’t make up her mind when it came to wedding gowns. The man, the date, the venue… none of these seemed to give her that much trouble, but even after she chose a wedding gown, she just couldn’t resist going back and trying on more wedding gowns. She pretty much fell in love with every gown she tried on, and bought them all.

In the end, even she decided that eighteen gowns was probably too many for one single day. She returned one to the shop it came from, but was unable to do the same with the other eight she wound up rejecting, due to the fact that alterations had already been made. She finally sold five on eBay and gave the other thee to charity.

Mrs. Glass has already announced that she intend to hold a vow reaffirmation next year, where she intends to wear ten gowns. Mr. Glass (who used his student loan to buy her engagement ring) would probably do well to start putting by a gown fund right now.

While I in no way begrudge any bride her right to be fabulous on her wedding day, I do still have to ask whether this level of costume changes was absolutely necessary. After all, it takes time to change a wedding gown and accessories, and while she does seem to have had less changes of accessories, she did change them at least a couple times in the course of events, as witnessed by the photos of her in all her many gowns.

Assuming a turnaround of roughly ten minutes per gown (which is actually a fair clip for bridal), that means she spent nearly an hour and a half just changing clothes throughout the day and evening. And I don’t know about you, but I’ve done multiple costume changes, back in my more theatrical days, and it’s not fun tearing your clothes off at breakneck speed, changing into new ones, remembering what extras go with which outfit, and then making another grand entrance without appearing in the least frazzled or rushed. Just getting married is more than enough excitement for one day, if you ask me.

So while I don’t automatically consider her wicked or evil for making this choice, and I don’t assume it will lead to the end of her marriage before she makes it to that reaffirmation, I also don’t think it’s a good idea to emulate her choice.

Several times on Say Yes to the Dress, I’ve seen Randy say that once you’ve found a gown, You Stop Looking. And you know what? Unless you have a very specific reason for wanting more than one gown, I consider that tremendously good advice.

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 13th, 2011 at 8:30 am and is filed under Brides, Dresses, Real Weddings, Unusual Weddings, Wedding Dresses, Weddings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.