Keepsake Dresses

I just finished making my dress for Gerald's wedding. This is the last dress I'll make for a son's wedding. It is still seven weeks in the future but I hate doing things at the last minute. I would rather have the dress hanging in my closet for seven weeks than have to scramble to finish it the week of the wedding. I was told to wear pink for this wedding and bought the fabric when we were in Nicaragua in February. It's an emboridered cotton which should be comfortable for a summer wedding.

As I was hemming the dress I thought it is probably destined to someday join the other keepsake dresses in my cedar closet. I have worn out or given away many of my dresses over the years but there are some I keep for sentimental reasons. (I had no sentimental attachment to my maternity dresses and happily parted with them when Gerald was born!!) I have a couple little dresses I wore before I went to school, the one I wore for my baptism when I was ten, a rust-colored taffeta I wore when I was thirteen and fancied I was an elegant lady. Then there is a blue satin bridesmaid's dress I wore more than forty years ago, my white lace-over-taffeta wedding dress, the silver dress I wore for our 25th anniversary, the dresses I wore for our children's weddings, and the black one I wore for the funerals of my mother and our 18 year-old son (only five months apart).

One thing I've learned is that children do not leave the way they came. The six children we raised (plus one stillborn) came to us in a fifteen-year span but it is twenty years since the first one left the nest. The youngest is leaving last but the one who was third-born was the first to marry. Our only daughter married at the age of 20 but the boys waited a little longer, marrying anywhere between the ages of 23 and 29. Now we've come to the end of the line and my pink dress is ready and waiting to be worn at the last wedding. I'll wear it after the wedding for awhile but I expect it will eventually join the line up of keepsake dresses in my closet.