my wedding: the dress

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We are celebrating six years together this month. They have been beautiful, ugly, and everything in between. Together my beloved and I have endured one another, loved one another, birthed two babies together, parented together, fought with one another — we have so much to still learn.

I have wanted to share my wedding for a while and I thought this would be the perfect time. I will share my dress, my flowers, and my love.

My Israeli wedding dress. It just makes me smile. I bought it before we were engaged, when I visited The Land for three months after I received my bachelor’s degree and didn’t know what I was doing with my life. It was truly the trip of a lifetime (more here).

I certainly didn’t expect to find my dream wedding dress in a little shop on Dizengof Street in Tel Aviv, but I happened to walk in to one of many wedding dress shops in a beautiful district of the city. There, on a mannequin, hung the dress of my dreams.

Lace, simple, to the floor, v-neck, beautiful back. I was with a friend for this part of my trip and she convinced me to try it on. I fell in love. I bought it and the shop owner (pictured below) created a new dress, perfect to my measurements. I never thought I’d buy or have a custom-made wedding gown, but the price was oh so right and this was fate.

One hiccup — I wasn’t engaged to my love (yet). Of course this is kind of “crazy girlfriend” behavior, but we were very serious and I already knew that God had chosen him for me — (we had been dating for two years already).

When he picked me up from the airport and asked, “What’s in the big box?” (I had hand-carried the box through two long flights and the stewardesses all were excited that I had my wedding dress in tow — I didn’t have the heart, or nerve, to tell any of them that I wasn’t actually engaged.) I just answered, “Souvenirs!” Yes, the ultimate souvenir, my beloved wedding gown.

When he proposed, about a month later, I blurted out to him, “I already have my dress!” He wasn’t the least bit surprised.

It hangs in my closet now. I never cleaned it, so the bottom still has dirt from the beautiful March day that we became man and wife. I don’t mind that. I lived and loved in this dress.

I adore it.