I love fashion – Ever since I was a child I have always loved dressing up and expressing a story or a mood with my outfit. Naturally, you would think that I rejoiced at the prospect to get my wedding dress. Except that I didn’t – while I took great delight in planning all the other details for our wedding, I kept putting my search for ‘the dress’ on hold. I even knew what kinds of bridesmaid dresses I wanted before I had a clue what my wedding dress would look like.
To be quite honest, wedding dresses have always scared me a little. They seem lovely enough on other people, but they always seemed too white, too ethereal, too angelic to fit me. They also seemed to be made for the fragile, doe-eyed models with ringlets in their hair on wedding magazine covers, not for a woman in a wheelchair who owns the title ‘Burger Queen 2011’ (which was NOT an eating contest, but an ironic beauty pageant for fat people. Most other competitors were drag queens).
Bridal magazines with their massive lack of diversity on their pages did nothing to inspire me, and instead made feel increasingly anxious that there would be no dress out there that a) I wouldn’t find bland, white and boring and b) fit me.
Image Copyright (c) 2013, Dottie Photography
See the wedding in full here on Love My Dress
I don’t know why I found it so difficult, because my bridesmaids come in all shapes and sizes, and one of them, my friend Christina, is in a wheelchair too. I found it easy enough to find a beautiful dress that suits all of them, but I guess there is such an importance attached to the wedding dress that thinking about my own outfit it was a different story.
Luckily, some wedding blogs are bolder with the brides and dresses they feature, and I eventually found inspiration for my dress on this very blog, the wonderful Love My Dress. I read of other brides who wore gorgeous, bespoke dresses at their weddings – short ones, colourful ones – suddenly I realised that this was MY wedding and that everything was possible. I was going to wear a fabulous dress, and I was going to have fun with it!!
Image Copyright (c) 2013,Annamarie Stepney
See the wedding in full here on Love My Dress
However, the first dressmaker I met was not very helpful with creating my vision – suggesting I should wear ‘floaty’, ‘airy’ fabrics because they would ‘work with the wheelchair’. It’s well possible that floaty fabrics work well with wheelchairs, but they certainly don’t work well with my chubby thighs, thank you very much. Without giving too much away (as my beloved fiancé is likely to read this!), I knew that I wanted a dress that gave me some structure and that highlighted my hourglass figure, and nothing that could be described as hippyesque or ethereal – that’s just not my style.
On Love My Dress I read a feature about The State of Grace, who create bespoke dresses. Since The State of Grace ladies are still putting the finishing touches to my dress, I can’t reveal any details about the dress, but Lucia and her team instantly understood my vision and saw first and foremost me, my body and my personality, and then wheelchair. They did make some brilliant suggestions to accommodate the fact that I will spend most of the time of my wedding dress sitting, not standing, and made sure that my arms are not restricted to move in any way, but they never made me feel like my wheelchair created a problem for the dress design.
A recent post on Love My Dress featured past designs from The State of Grace in which you can see some most fabulous designs, including a sassy knee-length number and visions in bright blue and mint green!
Image Copyright (c) 2013, Tobiah Tayo
See the wedding in full here on Love My Dress
I also had an issue with shoes. I cannot wear heels and I usually wear orthopaedic boots, which look a bit like Doc Martens boots – not exactly romantic! I was really worried about finding shoes that fit my feet, since they are quite small but wide, and unusually shaped. Open shoes, like ballerinas, just slip off them. Luckily, my mum thought of the perfect solution – to have sheer, nude socks that fit my feet well, and then sew ballerinas around them. The whole solution was actually not expensive at all, as I found wonderful, cheap, sparkly ballerinas that will make me feel much more glamorous and girly than my orthopaedic boots.
I am very excited to show my dress – and shoes – to everyone (at the moment, the State of Grace ladies are still giving it its final touches) and I am so relieved I will be able to have a dress that fits me perfectly. In hindsight, I wish I would have overcome my fear of wedding dresses sooner and would have just gone to a few bridal shops to try some on, but at the same time I know I would not have found anything like the dress that State of Grace are creating for me.
I am wondering whether other readers of Love My Dress, and other brides (or grooms) feel that traditional wedding wear is just not quite for them – Are there other brides who were frustrated or scared about the dress hunt?
This will be my last post for Love My Dress before I am getting married next month, and I can’t wait to share my wedding pictures – and to show off my dress! In the mean time, you can read my previous blog posts which examine an access checklist, finding a venue, how I plan to roll down the aisle (with flashing front wheels!), my thoughts on love and how I have organised an accessible honeymoon.
I’d love to hear your thoughts and read your comments below – thank you so much everyone.
Nina
Nina Neon was born with a disability and has a mobility impairment. She is due to marry her fiance Bob in September 2014. Nina Writes our ‘Confessions of a Disabled Bride’ series, within which she documents and shares her experiences of planning a wedding.
