The wedding dress is a torture device. Not necessarily in the physical sense — unless you’re sporting a Pnina Tornai piece of corsetry that promises to elegantly fuse your spleen to your gall bladder because
but the dress can certainly be a nasty piece of psychological weaponry, particularly if you’re predisposed to anxiety over these sorts of things.
The blood, sweat and tears that can go into every little decision about your wedding day, compounded by second guesses and overanalyses, multiplied by the pressure of knowing that it’ll be THE MOST PHOTOGRAPHED DAY OF YOUR LIFE™…it all can easily condense itself into one quivering, emotional meltdown about whatever pricey assemblage of rags you choose to drape yourself in before you head down the aisle. Of course, none of it needs to be a big deal. Just find a dress you like and wear it, right? That’s how I thought it’d go for me, anyhow, until I got engaged, dipped a toe into the Wedding Industrial Complex, and lost my goddamn mind. And The Dress — the entire process of it, the shopping, the decisions, the fittings, the pricetags, the insecurities — bore the brunt of my psychosis.
Ultimately I loved my gown, but getting there was a genuine embarrassment. And while I was going to my fifth goddamn fitting for a dress that cost more — emotionally, psychically, financially — than I care to admit, Reddit user alkikat was calmly, contentedly creating the Chill Situation of her wedding dress dreams:
I crocheted my lace wedding dress on the bus during my work commute for about 5 months. The dress is a pattern I designed with a commonly used pineapple stitch. Here’s a video of my process [above]. The dress was practically free because I didn’t spend much money on it (under $30 for all of the materials including fabric for the lining) and I didn’t spend much extra time on it. My commute time couldn’t be used for anything else anyway. The dress is also machine washable (I’ve washed it several times), doesn’t wrinkle or need any special care, and I plan on wearing it again with linings of different colors and with the train bustled up in different ways.
She wins.
