subject: But As Embarrassing As It Is To Admit For Zentai [print this page] I had shed enough tearsI had shed enough tears. It was time to be a good sport. We compromised on ivory. I was surprised to find myself fingering, asking for lace, then strapless. In a word, traditional.
My practical side taking over, I went back for fittings alone, my mother-in-law back in London, and befriended the Black PVC Sexy Dress designer. The process was, dare I say it, pleasant and relaxing. Sure, I didn't get my moment of finding the costume zentai with my mom sitting on a chair crying at how beautiful I looked. I wasn't particularly bothered though.
It was material, not a moment.
A costume zentai is a costume zentai is a costume zentai.
And in the end, I even found a way to integrate my mother into the costume zentai process by salvaging the ivory lace flowers from her decades-old wedding gown and stitching them onto my veil. My own silent tribute.
For that one single day, I somehow managed to let go of everything I believed about life and death and earth and sky. I forgot about the limitations of mortality, about absence, about painful finality.
Instead, I let myself believe my mother was there with me -- in that piece of her costume zentai, or in the wind, or in the crowd of 50 squinting up at us -- but I believed she was there, with her own wedding gift of sorts: one more day for my ''with her'' column, which was one day fewer that I have lived without.
At my last fitting, I stood on a platform and stared at myself in the mirror, trying to be brave as the store attendants cooed.
It wasn't their fault that they lacked authority; they were being paid to say I looked good. And then I realized why this process had gone all wrong. I had been pretending I could do this by myself, had played the role of motherless daughter martyr, too proud to ask for someone to help me.
I'm 30, I had thought, I don't need someone to coo over me in my zentai. But as embarrassing as it is to admit, I did.
So I scheduled another fitting and forced my brother, the person I felt least guilty about inconveniencing on a Sunday afternoon, to come inspect. He cooed. No tears, maybe, but I got a ''Beautiful!'' or two, and since he knows me, a few mentions of ''Your hips look slim'' as well.
Just then, it was about the moment, not the material.
I had turned a corner. I let my father's girlfriend plan the bridal shower, a kind and maternal offer on her part, and one I would have ordinarily refused. Again, I realized I needed help, and like the Black PVC Top and Skirt, would have felt cheated if I had had to skip that part, despite my qualms about the ritual; all that faux excitement over kitchen gadgets and the childish game-playing was, like ballrooms and crinoline, not my style.
At the shower, I pretended it wasn't hard to be there, at what should have been a mother-daughter thing, and then it wasn't, really. My father's girlfriend made a toast, and I did, too, and I had to swallow tears only when I noticed some of my mother's friends, whom I hadn't seen in close to 16 years. They kindly said the words that were hardest to hear: ''She would have been so proud of you.''
AND now, seven months later, I realize she would have been. Turns out, I pulled off a pretty fantastic wedding. O.K., the hotel pulled off a pretty fantastic wedding, but I was the one who picked Option C.
And though I didn't send my mother an invitation, letterpress or otherwise, I know she was there on that island my husband and I had never been to, because I didn't feel deprived of her, not even for a single moment.
