When We were Brand New

When I was little we used to play dress up with my mother's wedding gown. It hung carelessly in a storage closet in our attic. Unlike brides of today, my Mom, who never really cared much about "things," hadn't heirloomed her dress and put it carefully away dreaming of the day one of her daughters would walk down the aisle in it.
No, her dress, champagne stain and all, hung carelessly in a musty attic closet.

That didn't keep my two sisters and me from LOVING it. We imagined every romantic detail of our parents' wedding... well that's an exaggeration. When we first discovered the dress we were very young and probably didn't know much about love and romance. But as we grew into our sixes, sevens and eights you can only imagine where our dreams took us.
Of course we thought our mother was glamorous and our father was dreamy. We'd grown up seeing pictures of their fancy Columbia wedding hung on our wall and we knew instinctually that it had been special.

My mother had gardenias in her hair and my father was in his dress uniform. You see it took place just after the bombing at Pearl harbor. It was an anxious time for our country but a joyous event for my parents and their families.

My sisters and I never knew anything about that. We just knew how much we loved that dress and what beautiful brides we would be one day when we wore it. And in those days, the early- to mid-fifties, my older sister was always the bride. She was beautiful with blond hair and big blue eyes. And my little sister was always the flower girl strewing what ever she could find as pretend flowers. I can't remember what role I usually played... maybe the groom. I was always the tallest and really didn't plead my case very well. But in spite of that, I remember those times fondly. And I did get to try the dress on when I was all alone up in that attic. Now that's when I really raptured romantic. And my groom? Well of course he was none other than the very handsome groom in those pictures downstairs!