Wedding Wednesday: The Wedding Dress Project

It’s official. At this time next year, The Boy and I will have been husband and wife for 5 whole days (can we just talk about how much more fun it is to talk about how many days you’ll have been married than it is to yammer on about how many days left until the wedding day?)! And I will become his wife while wearing the most amazing dress – with a more incredible story behind it.

Image Courtesy of: Flower De Lis

Confused? I understand. After all, I haven’t really mentioned my wedding gown in any of my prior posts (like this one, or this one, or even this one) though I do briefly refer to getting one here. And those of you who know me know that I am not very girly and haven’t been dreaming about my wedding gown for years. In fact, after I got engaged, everyone asked me what I would wear (this is the very next question after “Where’s the ring?” and “What’s the date?”… and I couldn’t tell them a thing. I just was not interested. I tried. Really, I did. I bought The Knot’s Wedding Dress Look Book Issue, I browsed wedding sites, and clicked through Martha’s Gallery. But – nada. Nothing. Nien.

So, I decided to delegate the activity. I told my Matron of Honor and my two bridesmaids that they were responsible for finding me a dress. They were SO excited and immediately began emailing me links to simple yet lovely summery dresses. But then, as it always seems to go, within weeks of me delegating this job and stopping the search – I found it. My dress.

I was browsing through Recycle Your Wedding over at Ruffled and stumbled upon a strange little ad. It went like this:

"For the past six months, I’ve been racking my brain, trying to figure out what to do with my wedding dress… my poor little dress has just been sitting in my closet all by her lonesome. It really made me sad to think that in her short life, she only had one day in the sun, only one day of glory. She was such a beautiful dress and did such a good job at making me feel absolutely stunning on my day; she really deserved at least one more spin on the dance floor. So, I’ve decided that the best way to honor our day and the dress is to donate her to another bride on a budget, ensuring she dances again."

And this was the accompanying picture:

And I fell in love. It was so beautiful and classic and modest (yet sexy). I held my breath and wrote to the lovely lady offering the dress. Then I hoped.

And within days I got an answer, I got picked! Elizabeth Perrin, the lovely woman who wanted her dress to find a new home, picked me to share its story. She was thrilled that I was getting married right next to her childhood hometown and that I had been working so hard to lose weight and become a healthier person for myself and my future husband. We’ve been emailing each other ever since.

But here’s the REALLY cool part. Elizabeth and I are so thrilled with this “recycling” program and with how it connected us that we’re launching it as a full-scale movement – The Wedding Dress Project. On it, you can share your wedding dress with other brides, who will then share it with another bride, and so on. We call it “Recycling the Love” and are pretty excited to see where it goes. And I am really looking forward to sharing my dress (the original Wedding Project Dress) with another bride after my May 2012 nuptials.

The Wedding Dress Project is up-and-running so check it out! Read the original post about this (from Elizabeth’s blog) here. Read my interview with Elizabeth here. Or email me about taking part in this project (dresses must be in like new condition but can be any size, style, or color). Or, just talk about The Wedding Dress Project in the comments!