If "Regret" Were a Wedding Dress

​The entry below was inspired by a photograph I took in White Plains, New York many years ago of a storefront containing a single mannequin dressed in a wedding gown. I found the bridal dress strangely outdated and unattractive  - and it wasn’t in a thrift shop it was in an actual store.  In the book entry I was able to correct the short comings of the real dress in the window by making it “sumptuous and sexy”.

"Dear D., 
Rick and Rho had the prettiest wedding gown at Another~Boutique this morning.  It was on a mannequin right in the store front window. The dress had a sleeveless top in form-fitting pleats that gathered at the waist with a wide taffeta sash out from which billowed a huge organza skirt that spiraled out the back in a long, crumply train.  
All that material must have made quite the racket as the bride walked down the aisle. The skirt had fleurettes sewn 
​through, as did the neckline of the bodice.  It was the color of champagne. It was sumptuous. It was sexy. 

I opened the dusky-rose door with a push: 
ME [entering store]. Wow Ruth, that's some dress you've got there.  
RUTH [looking up from her bi-focals].  Isn't it something? We can’t wait to see who buys it. 

It's not uncommon to see bridal gowns in secondhand stores.  They show up more than you’d think.  I find them rather melancholy. After all, wedding dresses are inherently festive.  
But cast off by their former brides, they become supremely sorrowful – true or false?

Had I taken a photograph of that storefront window and written a one-word caption beneath it would have said ‘REGRET.’  After all, why would someone donate her wedding dress to a thrift shop?  I know I keep mine neatly folded in an archival box -my shoes and veil wrapped in tissue paper.  I’ve never thought of that as being a referendum on the state of my marriage, but I suppose it is.
​

Revelation: Behind every resplendent wedding gown hanging longingly in thrift stores, there’s a story ending in broken dreams, if not broken hearts."