Earlier this year, I was lucky enough to be able to 're-marry' my wonderful partner. This small ceremony was held in front of a few very close friends and allowed us to celebrate parts of our lives that we usually hide. There will soon be a few pages giving the full story of the wedding, but in the mean time, this article covers one important part of the tale. It was written a couple of years ago while I was still hunting for a wedding dress.
If you're ever a bit bored, this is no way to try to entertain yourself. Ring round wedding dress shops asking if they can do dresses for men.
The main problem is that these gowns are designed to really flatter women's bodies. To do this, they assume that certain bits are in certain places. Being tall for a girl makes finding clothes that fit hard enough, but being male means that my waist is not quite in the right position and my arms are rather long. The result is that in anything but the most shapeless dress, I look a bit funny.
This means that it'd be best if I could get a dress made, so I've ended up spending a few days asking shops to see if they could cope with fitting me for a gown. It would be far simpler to get a generic dress through mail order (or by getting a female friend to stand in for me), but the end result would probably be not nearly as good.
Whenever dealing with a shop that doesn't solely cater for trannies, my first rule is to always to be polite. I ring them up and ask nicely and clearly if they can help - if they can't cope, I thank them and put the phone down. I rang about ten wedding shops and dressmakers advertising in magazines and yellow pages. Of those, seven couldn't cope (and it sounds like a few shop assistants were rather suprised by the request). Funnily enough, shop owners tended to have seen it before but quite reasonably some felt that they didn't want my business. Though it's disappointing, I can quite understand this - even if the shop owner is enlightened, her other customers may not be, and may feel very unhappy that their dream dress is a style that has been worn by a bloke. It's very easy when someone tells you that they are happy to deal with you as a crossdresser to get rather over excited, but no one wants a bad drag act prancing round their shop and scaring away the normal folk.
The greatest shame was a shop that has previously sold dresses for TVs, but has since stopped. I didn't find out what had changed their minds, but I really hope it wasn't a tranny not knowing how to behave. Another shop was very helpful, but couldn't take any orders for months... and so the search went on.
Ringing one shop, I was pleased to find the manager very happy to help, and arranged a first meeting to discuss what they could do. We discussed some of the details which helped me to begin to understand what sort of thing I wanted. The manager also suggested I cut some pictures out of wedding magazines to make a little scrapbook of the things I like. I went away to think things over before ringing back to arrange a potential fitting. To my suprise, I got a call an hour later from a distressed woman - the owner of the shop. It appeared that the manager had not let her know that the shop was dealing with such a perverted person, and she was ringing up to ask me to go away. Oh well. I confused the hell out of her by being very polite and understanding and apologising for putting her in such an awkward position. She very clearly wasn't expecting a response like that. *grin*
I found two more shops that were willing to make me a dress, and visited both of them with my new scrap book. The first was very smart and had rows of beautiful fitted gowns hanging up. The owner(?) has been a theatrical dressmaker and produces fantastic elegant dresses to die for. She was very helpful and produced a quick sketch design as we discussed the styles I like. Finally, at my request, I was allowed to try on a dress they had on display - a corsetted gown costing 1400 pounds(!) It was absolutely stunning to wear, but clearly emphasised the areas where a gown would have to be made to fit my different frame. This reinforced my desire to have a dress properly made to measure for a day I won't forget.
The second shop was a much smaller affair, producing simple gowns to a much more reasonable budget. The owner was very nice, showing me samples of her work and some of the materials and styles we could use. Sadly though, she wasn't quite so used to my desire for a very fitted dress so to the horror of my bank manager, I've chosen the other shop.
Since then, we've discussed my plans, and my dress will cost rather less than the one I tried on (*sigh*). There will be a first fitting, where we get the design ironed out. Then, as there will be corsets to get right, a second fitting with cheap material making up a trial bodice. A third, and possibly forth fitting should ensure that everything is perfect.
And what will the gown be like? Well, you'll have to wait and see, but I'll tell you now that it'll feature burgundy details, full skirts with a short train, and a corsetted bodice. The rest you'll have to wait for.