Shortly after we set the wedding date, a wave of panic hit me like lightning. I was a 63-year-old bride; this was my second marriage, and I had no idea what to wear. The only thing I was sure of was that I was marrying my soulmate, and I didn’t want to wear white. My research started with a Google search: something like “non-wedding wedding dress for an older bride.”
After browsing Pinterest, Net-a-Porter, Revolve, and Moda Operandi for several days, I came up empty-handed. I asked a few stylish friends for dress ideas. They all offered great suggestions, but none felt right for me. My mind flooded with negative thoughts. No one wants to see an older bride. I hate being the center of attention. I’m too old for this. I’m the crypt-keeper bride! I started snapping at my fiancé, whom I’ve been with for fifteen years, questioning why we were bothering to get married after all this time. The whole process felt like literal torture. The more negative thoughts I had, the more I wanted to call the whole thing off. But that previous summer, Charlie’s 82-year-old mother looked at me with her big blue eyes and told me how much it would mean to her if I married her son before she passed away. I promised her that day that we would get married the following summer, and there was no backing out now.
Charlie and I were seeing an incredible couples therapist at the time, which we’ve done periodically since we started dating to keep our relationship strong and healthy. We consider therapy as an annual checkup for our relationship. Our therapist helped me realize that when I told Charlie I didn’t want to marry him — even if it was because I couldn’t handle finding a dress — it felt like a gut punch to him. That reality check left me feeling deeply saddened over causing him pain because I was having wedding dress anxiety.
I reset my attitude, which helped me realize I didn’t have a clear idea of what I wanted to wear. Without a vision, choosing a dress was impossible. We decided to hold a small ceremony on the little dock overlooking the beach in Maine, where we spend every August. The ceremony would be for our immediate family and friends who feel like family. Later, we would throw a party in LA to celebrate with our friends.
Now I had a general theme. The word ‘bohemian’ came to mind, but when I searched for dresses with that style, they weren’t quite what I envisioned. I wanted something modest, ethereal, casual, and long. We decided Charlie wouldn’t wear a tie, which I thought would help my search, but it didn’t. To my disappointment, what I imagined didn’t seem to exist. I swung between Bianca Jagger in her ‘70s pantsuit and Carolyn Bessette with her bias-cut slip dress. Then I’d try on a dress and be hit with a reality check from my crepey arm skin and post-menopausal back fat.
While aimlessly bulk-ordering dresses, I came across a photo in Vogue Wedding of a bride wearing an ethereal, light, and airy Donna Karan gown from her Spring 2011 collection. This was my dream dress, and I started searching for it on vintage sites, but the dress was nowhere to be found. At least I had a vision, and I thought that should be enough to find a dress. Boy, was I wrong! The vision only made me feel discouraged because they don’t make dresses like that anymore. The dress I wanted didn’t exist. We were on a weekend trip in Vegas, so Charlie, a friend, and I spent one day shopping for dresses. I tried Ulla Johnson, Rabanne, Prada, Chanel, and Missoni, among others. Nothing felt quite right. I half-heartedly put a Missoni dress on hold, hoping I could find something better.
The following week, I got an unexpected email from a stylist. I looked at it, thinking I definitely needed help finding a wedding dress, and I also had to style Charlie and our four sons. I had worked with a stylist during my first book tour, so I understood how it worked. I emailed Dustin, and after some back-and-forth messages, he agreed to help style my wedding. Dustin was an absolute pleasure to work with, and as soon as I hired him, I felt like I could breathe again. I sent him my Donna Karan dream dress runway collection, which he completely ignored, knowing full well that it was not available and not the right dress for me. It was actually brilliant how he worked his magic on me. He would send me dresses, and through texts and photos of me in the dresses, he got closer and closer to my dream dress.
The first vintage Cucculelli Shaheen dress he sent me was stunning, but I couldn’t zip it up. Looking back, I realize the yellow would have blended into the beach, but it was the first dress I truly loved, and I was determined to make it fit. It was hand-beaded and custom-made for someone, with constellations on the skirt that matched the day the previous owner wore the dress. That idea felt so romantic and made me love the dress even more. A talented seamstress looked at the dress and told me there was no way to alter it because it had no seams and no extra fabric to make it larger. I returned the dress feeling heartbroken. Dustin sent me another vintage Cucculelli Shaheen dress, which was an XL. He said sizes were hard to read on The Real Real, and having a too-big dress was better than a too-small one. The beaded dress had a plunging neckline, double side slits, and a fiery pink hue. I loved it, but I had to make it fit, and the plunging neckline wouldn’t work for this 63-year-old grandma.
I found a master seamstress who specialized in beadwork and mostly worked on wedding dresses. She asked me when my wedding was, and when I told her, she confirmed there was enough time for her to alter the dress. We scheduled an appointment, and I felt hopeful. When I arrived at her atelier with a bright pink dress, I thought her jaw would stay glued to the floor. “Is that your wedding dress?” she asked in utter disbelief. I confirmed it was and felt worried that I had made the wrong choice. The time between dropping off my dress for alterations and picking it up was pure anxiety for me.
I started ordering dresses like crazy—mostly white ones—second-guessing my decision to wear a bright color. Charlie bought me a beautiful dress from Love Shack Fancy without telling me. The white tea-length dress was covered in pink opalescent flowers, with spaghetti straps and a fitted bodice. It fit like a glove, but I felt too old to wear a dress like that. “Keep it as a backup,” Charlie said. “It looks amazing on you.” I wondered how I got so lucky to find a guy like Charlie. When I kept ordering dresses, he said, “Every time a new dress arrives, a little part of me dies inside.” He was half joking, but was he really? I knew I was acting like a total lunatic, but I couldn’t stop until I felt that feeling. The one that screams from the mountaintops, “This is the dress!” But this wasn’t my first wedding, and I wasn’t twenty-five. Did that feeling even exist anymore?
The day had arrived for my final dress fitting, and if everything looked perfect, I would take it home. I went into the dressing room to put on the dress and got stuck halfway in. I called for help through the door. The seamstress joined me while I apologized for her having to see me half-naked. Once I pulled the dress over my head and she zipped and adjusted it, I could tell by her expression that this was my dress. She put her hand over her mouth and stepped back as I stood in front of the three-way mirror. “Wow,” she said. “It’s perfect.” Sometimes, all a woman needs is a little encouragement from another woman to feel like everything is okay in her world.
On our wedding day, the pink bougainvillea dress stood out against the ocean backdrop and the deep blue sky. It expressed happiness and love, perfectly reflecting my feelings. Looking back at the intense anxiety I had while shopping for my wedding dress, I can clearly see why I felt that way. I was married to the wrong person for 19 years, and getting a divorce was one of the most painful experiences of my life. I wish I could have talked to my parents about why each of them married three or four times. Was it not a big deal to them? The idea of failing again at such an important commitment terrified me, and that fear, combined with being an older bride, overwhelmed me. I know my deep anxiety wasn’t really about the dress. I tried to call off my first marriage because my gut screamed I wasn’t marrying the right person, but I didn’t listen. There were no doubts about Charlie, no concern that he might not be my forever person, but I still carried that divorce trauma inside me, and it surfaced when we set a wedding date. I’m still learning to listen to my gut. In the weeks before our wedding, I felt calm, peaceful, and blessed. Nothing inside me was telling me otherwise. In the end, I overcame my emotions and focused on what truly mattered—that I had found my person, and he wanted to spend forever with me
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