The Bride Wore White

... But her shoulders were showing.

I wasn’t the girl who dreamed of weddings or played bride dress up with her friends. The kind of girl who would have had a trunk full of marriage starting necessities like jello molds, tea towels, and copies of marriage books from Focus on The Family. I didn’t fantasize about Prince Charming or gush over babies at church.

I existed in a world where novels about dragons and poetry about existential angst pounded off the Pentecostal, evangelical cage I lived in. My world held only glimpses of a life beyond the Sunday/Wednesday church service carousel in the form of long-distance speech and drama meets, music festivals miles away, and those occasional trips to town with my friend in her Mustang.

I was gawky and awkward with large brown glasses and denim skirts, and I lived in a state of anxiety and awareness, ignorance and naïveté. Being both hyper-aware and blissfully blind, my existence was a whiplash of identity in constant conflict.

I was exhausted.

There were brief moments of romance-flavored connections. Flavored like a La Croix.

Robbie, in the sophomore hallway, Jeff, at church camp. Dustin, at the district and state drama competitions. But no one liked me enough. No one wanted to keep my attention. Ignorant of anything different, I settled into the imagined love affairs of a teenage girl who’d read too much Brontë and Harlequin and watched The Princess Bride too many times.

There was a small hope that there might be someone out there for me, but my mom had made it clear so many times that I was not the kind of girl someone would want to marry.

Still, maybe I’d be the kind of girl that someone might, someday, like more than average. I didn’t expect an epic love story. I would have been happy for someone who just picked me out of a crowd.

She never said why no one would want me, so my brain filled in all the gaps with the reasons that made sense. Well, the things that made sense to someone who believed that the paragons of womanly virtue were the girls paraded across the church stage.

A woman who prompts love would be quiet. She would be an asset to her husband and would play the piano. I played the piano. But not that well.

She would teach Sunday School and have a firm understanding of the value of a well-placed nursery rhyme.

She was thin and gracious, and her long, flowing hair would always be shiny. Her clothes were always clean, and she never looked frumpy. She always smiled. She would never be found with the barn on her shoes, burrs in her hair, and an armful of nearly feral kittens.

She wasn’t loud. Not just a soft voice but a soft demeanor. She didn’t ask about things or give voice to the desire to understand the inconsistencies between the pulpit religion and the lifestyle version she witnessed.

She didn’t read books with wizards or fairies on the cover or laugh at all the wrong jokes. She didn’t chew her nails, and she wore perfume that smelled like a light floral, not sandalwood or cedar.

People would be drawn to her, and she’d be kind. Caring and compassionate. Soft, white hands with a clear gloss manicure are

fit to wear a sparkling ring.

Everyone liked her. She was the center of attention and the glue of her friend group. Boys are stumbling over themselves to be by her side.

She was chaste. Pure. She didn’t say bad words or know what it meant to be ashamed of something that happened in the dark.

Maybe Mom was right. How could anyone want me?

How, indeed.

Because there I was, standing in front of a mirror wearing a brocade dress, nipped at the waist, gently falling off my shoulders into the biggest mid-90s puffed sleeves you can imagine before tapering to a point over the top of my hand. Accenting the hammered gold band and sparkling diamond solitaire on my left ring finger.

The long skirt draped over petticoats and ruffles and settled onto the carpeted floor. I stood alone on the stool, looking at the three-way mirror. Just me. At a basement shop in Pocatello, Idaho, choosing a wedding dress. Knowing I didn’t have enough time or money to buy one and lacking the connections and the skill to make one I was left with one choice.

A rental. $89 for 1 day to look like the bride I never imagined I’d be.

“I’ll take it. The date is September 24th. Here’s half now, and I’ll pay the rest later.”

She looked at the fabric pooled on the floor and measured the necessary length to alter it to my 5’2” height. She measured my waist and suggested I lose at least 20 pounds before the wedding or the dress wouldn’t fit. Challenge accepted.

30 years later, I sit here a little stunned. It never occurred to me to take anyone with me. It didn’t resonate that anyone would want to. It was just one more thing I did alone. It was just another milestone I found myself at without a shoulder to lean on.

I’d moved out of my childhood home three days after the end of high school, filling my soft-sided graduation gift luggage with all my worldly possessions and piling into the yellow two-door car my brother was driving. I’d lived in a world of strangers for two years, navigating expectations, “spiritual calling”, and a constant transition of faces over a thousand miles from home.

Yet, somehow, despite all my shortcomings, I’d met him. Him. Capital H. The man who called me every day. Who proposed under fireworks next to a wide, slow river. Even when he had to repeat himself, he didn’t hesitate. It was unexpected, and everyone had their suspicions. We were moving fast. So fast. Crazy fast.

But I wanted him. To be with him. Being apart was painful. We’d become incomplete when separated.

He made me feel safe and wanted and important. He wanted to marry me, but we lived states apart. Since I didn’t have any real compelling reasons to stay where I was, and his life existed where he was, I would go to him.

There was only one way possible, as our combined moral and spiritual convictions harmonized to give us only one specific option.

Stay apart or get married, and we didn’t want to stay apart.

So we jumped, both feet, into a whirlwind engagement. A wedding originally intended for Christmas with velvet dresses, candlelight, and pine trees that sparkled with tinsel became a 6 week panic of fake flowers on borrowed candelabras and unoriginal vows in a church with bars and wire mesh over the gym/fellowship hall windows.

Mom and Dad were willing to pay for my wedding if it was as inexpensive as possible. I didn’t even question or demand. I’d never been the one given big and elaborate gifts. My sister’s weddings featured large entourages, churches filled with people and well-wishes, a joyful feeling. The food and laughter.

I wanted dinner, since we were getting married at 7 pm, but Mom refused. Frappé and butter mints. Nuts and nothing else. There would be no great celebration.

Of course, there wasn’t. It was just me getting married to someone no one knew, and while Dad had made it clear that by marrying me, Brian was expected to take on my medical expenses, there wasn’t anyone who’d met him that had taken the time to tell him that he was also responsible for my heart and well-being. There were no “treat her right or else” conversations by well-meaning brothers. Bill asked him what his intentions were in their basement apartment when we met up during the week he visited for Memorial Day, and his answer must have been good enough because no one else said a word. Offered an opinion.

As the days approached for the wedding, it was as though a collective sigh of relief softly echoed through the Glaser family as they handed off the responsibility and the pressure of the care and feeding of Heidi.

The list of people who couldn’t or wouldn’t come soon was outpaced by the guest list of strangers, and the pews set aside for friends were replaced with open seating. It didn’t matter where people sat anymore. My sisters and my friend from high school became my bridesmaids, and Mom picked out dresses from the bridal shop in Billings. No one asked me. But at least the colors were right. Black and white.

There were no soft pastels or gentle baby’s breath. I wasn’t that kind of bride. It wasn’t that kind of wedding.

The off-white, drop waist, lacy polyester dress with a high collar and long sleeves that Mom had purchased off the clearance rack in the mall was in her closet now. A straight fit that would have hid a pregnant belly well and had cost her only $11.00. I knew I should have been grateful for her effort, but I still thought I should be able to pick out my dress. Unfortunately, that meant I had to pay for it.

It took me 15 years to realize that the dress she bought was a maternity dress and not just a shapeless shell to hide my curves and body. There were whispers and speculation about the rush we were in that led people to believe things that were simply not true. There was no immorality. There were no lines crossed that warranted the suspicion and the conversations from people who “Didn’t have a good feeling about this. It’s too fast.” Nothing to soften the blow of the friend who couldn’t come because there was a spiritual conviction not to support our marriage.

Not that anyone said much out loud. Not really. They just assumed, I suppose. Because I was Heidi. I was Chaos. Trouble. Questions and rebellion. Lipstick and earrings.

No one seemed to pay attention to the worn-out Bible.

No one asked me about the future we had planned.

Imagine their surprise when our first child was born three years later.

He called me at the end of July.

“So, I talked to your mom, and she thinks we should move the wedding up to September. Weather and stuff. People can more easily come. She is pushing for it.” He was so hopeful. So eager to just get married and have me with him in our new home.

Of course, I said yes. I wondered if he talked to my mom too much, maybe he’d realize what he was getting into. He might change his mind.

It was a flurry of invitations, simple decisions, and trying to make sense of it all. A 20-year-old with an expired driving license who didn’t even have her checking account, who thought $100 was a lot of money, was in charge of putting together an event intended to impress a 29-year-old man who’d waited for years to find his bride. I had no idea what I was doing. And pennies to spend. But I tried.

She said no to the venue I wanted. No, to the flowers I asked for. Second-guessed the cake I suggested. Blocked the assistance offered by my sister-in-law’s mother. She criticized my ceremony ideas and talked to the flower and cake ladies without my knowledge, making decisions about the settings and design before I even knew those were questions I could have asked. Suggestions I might have made.

Working 40+ hours as a hotel maid, cleaning over 20 rooms a day, I put my head down, saved my paychecks, and did my best to endure. To make the best of it.

Soft, hopeful conversations in my basement bedroom with the man from California were the balm that kept me going. The joy and excitement he shared about me and us, a sparkle of anticipation I couldn’t believe belonged to me.

And then, suddenly and not quite fast enough, it was the day before. We went through the steps. Pachelbel’s Canon playing through the sound system. Step, together, step. Slowly moving down the aisle, hand tucked into my father’s arm, silently walking forward in my deep green dress. At the end of the aisle, next to my brother’s pastor, his eyes on mine, his presence turned the normal anxiety I felt about being any kind of focal point into a faint shadow. I was safe when he held my hand. No one else mattered. He was taking me away. From all of it.

Midnight fast approaching, I sat in my sister’s dining room with my friends from high school, and we talked and laughed while I put on cheap fake nails. The next morning, while the rest of the family went to brunch, I packed my wedding dress and toiletries, some decorations, the curling iron and hairspray, and went to the church.

Alone, I finalized decorations and curled my hair. My maid of honor arrived, and we put ourselves together. Regular makeup was toned down to suit the religious preferences of the church, and the familiar pinching elastic of shape wear constricted me enough to squeeze me into a dress that I fit into just fine.

Her hands roughly pulled the fabric from the edge of my shoulders up toward my collarbone as she tried to cover my bare skin.

“Mom! It’s either my shoulders or my chest! If you pull it up that way, the front falls open!”

She stopped touching me, and the discomfort in the room tightened like a noose. Having nothing else to say, she faded from the story and left me to the lovely little flower girl in her bright dress and soft brown eyes. To the nieces who told me I looked beautiful, and the sisters who gathered in our space to put all the right touches on ourselves before we ventured upstairs.

Slowly, the muffled mumble of voices through the building grew as family and friends trickled in, filling the space. The cake was delivered and set up. The little brass figures I collected since childhood made the simple table decorations a bright spot in an otherwise nondescript, institutional space.

There were no toasts, no dances, no celebrations. By the time we’d drowned the unity candle in wax, shuffled through a ceremony that included too many things for show and not enough that was ours, the cake tasted like sawdust. Our professional photos took too long, and the little ones were cranky as the minutes beyond a reasonable bedtime ticked on. My mother’s frown was a consistent and constant accessory to the offwhite lace dress she wore. $11 from the mall. Maybe in her mind, I didn’t deserve to wear white.

They sent us off with cheering and Mom’s wedding night advice to “rest well,” the only words I remember her speaking the entire evening.

And there we were. Married. Two nights in a Victorian bed and breakfast that had every floral pattern known to man incorporated in a one-bedroom suite. All my things in the back of a navy blue Jeep Cherokee. My name no longer theirs but his and somehow, more mine than it had ever been.

I was free. I was kept.

Some days leave scars that you feel right away, and some leave wounds that only show up later. Some days bring joy wrapped around pain, and some days just hurt; all the reasons piling up on each other like unmatched socks. My wedding day was one of those days.

At the moment, I was completely happy to be there. Oblivious to the suspicion and undercurrents. Years passed before I saw the sadness of me sitting alone, curling my hair in the church basement. The cruelty of a day made into anything but a celebration of me, of us. The shock of becoming aware of the judgmental and cutting conversations that happened behind my back. The shame that came with realizing I was being passed on, not given. Deposited on Brian’s doorstep like a guest who’d overstayed their welcome.

They didn’t see a man who loved me. A man willing to wrestle with the reality of my upbringing and trauma. A man who not only liked my chaos but preferred it and was thankful for all the ways I opposed the stereotypes that tried to make me something less. While their hands hurt and their words cut, his were kind and his words were sincere.

Almost 2 decades after the wedding, in a bit of a mental health crisis, I was prescribed a medication to help me manage my emotions and my anxiety. It smoothed out all the edges, and I became agreeable and compliant. All “yes, dear” and “of course”. For a year, I rarely pushed back, and the space to not feel or respond so intensely was a gift that helped me process many other things in life.

But my husband? He missed me. He told me that he didn’t like being married to someone who didn’t push back. A woman who didn’t have opinions of her own. I was a shell of the woman he had given room to exist and encouraged to grow.

Looking back, I see so many things. But the thing I have said for decades about our wedding stays the same.

I wish we had eloped.