Goodbye Bride, Hello Mama

I just sold my wedding dress today.

I couldn't really decide what to do with my dress after the wedding last summer, so it's been hanging up in our bedroom ever since. Not quite wanting to spend the money to preserve it, yet unable to just trash it, I left it there to deal with later. My husband, however, had other ideas. Maybe it was the huge box that it took up all by itself when the movers packed it. Or maybe he's just not so sentimental about such things. In any case, he asked me to "do something with it" when we moved down here. Still not wanting to pay someone to fold it neatly into a box, I decided to sell it or donate it. After a couple months of craigslisting it, I finally got a buyer today. She's a nice girl about my age (and size, conveniently) from Maryland and she loved it when she tried it on. I'm happy to see it put to good use again. It really is a pretty dress...

So Matt and I were talking about it afterward, discussing the significance of the dress. "I didn't keep my tux from the wedding," he says, "so what's the big deal?" I tried to explain to him that somehow for the girl getting married, the dress is sort of symbolic of the fact that she is a bride. It's one of the first (and most agonized over) things that she'll pick out for the wedding, and it represents in some way her bride-ness, even after the fact. Fortunately, as I leave behind this particular symbol of being a bride, I can move seamlessly into a new phase of life: mommy-hood.

*Note: this is also the last of the major tasks that I wanted to accomplish prior to Elmo's arrival. He probably needs a few more weeks to cook, but he can come out any time now, as far as I'm concerned. :-)