Another Mother/Daughter Milestone: Buying a Wedding Dress

Now that my daughter is in her mid-thirties, I thought we had passed all the mother/daughter milestones. But apparently not. She is getting married later this summer, and she came to visit recently with the intention of taking me to help her buy a wedding dress. We spent an afternoon doing just that.

Our shopping excursion brought back memories of buying my wedding dress with my mother in early September 1977. I was at Stanford Law School at the time, living in graduate student housing. My roommate had not yet moved into our apartment, so my mother flew to San Francisco and stayed with me. I hadn’t roomed with my mother in ten years, since 1967 when we visited my grandmother in Pacific Grove. I was a little leery of the mother/daughter togetherness, but my mother and I did fine as roommates for a few days.

I don’t remember picking my mother up at the San Francisco airport, though I and/or my fiancé must have. I don’t remember driving into San Francisco to shop for dresses, though I must have driven us in my fiancé’s car.

But I do remember shopping for the dress.

My mother and I went to I. Magnin, a high-end department store in San Francisco. That was the only place we shopped, but we got the job done. I tried on three or four dresses, no more. One of them seemed beautiful as soon as I tried it on—lace bodice, flowing skirt, very traditional. Both my mother and I liked it. That’s the one we bought. I don’t remember what the others looked like.

The dress needed some alterations. (It was a size 3, but it had to be taken in. I only weighed 88 pounds at the time.) I went back to I. Magnin’s by myself for a final fitting a few weeks later. But I don’t recall how the dress got from I. Magnin’s in San Francisco to my parents’ home in Richland, Washington, for the wedding in late November 1977.

Did it spend time in my apartment closet, then did I carry it on the airplane in November?

Did I. Magnin’s ship it?

No matter, somehow it arrived, and I arrived, and my fiancé and I were married.

Now, forty-five years later, my daughter and I shopped for her wedding dress. As my mother and I did, my daughter and I only went to one store—an off-the-rack wedding dress store in Kansas City.

She must have tried on ten to twelve dresses, but we quickly narrowed it down to four . . . and then to two . . . and then to one. At the end, as she was making the purchase decision, I reminded her that we could buy this dress or she could shop by herself back home in Seattle. I was pretty sure she didn’t want to spend more time shopping, and I was right. She quickly concluded this dress was perfectly fine. And it is. It’s a lovely dress—classic and simple and elegant, just like my daughter, in a beautiful jacquard fabric that drapes just right.

And it has pockets. When my daughter was in high school, she refused to wear any uniform skirt that didn’t have pockets. The pocket version of her uniform skirt was discontinued after her freshman year, so at the start of her sophomore year, I bought her a skirt without pockets. When she wouldn’t wear the new skirt, her father took it to a tailor to have pockets put in.

My daughter’s wedding dress will be shipped to her in Seattle, she will find someone to alter it, and she will keep it at home until the wedding, which is planned for her backyard. I will let her manage that process, as she is managing most of the wedding preparations.

After our afternoon together, I now wonder what other mother/daughter experiences remain in my future. I will no longer make the mistake of believing we are past such events. Whatever comes my way, I’m sure I will cherish those times as much as I cherish my daughter’s including me in buying her wedding dress.

But I won’t post any pictures of her dress until after the wedding. After all, the groom isn’t supposed to see it until then.

What memories of milestone traditions do you cherish?