Following the Supreme Court ruling on the definition of a woman, please see below the changes to how I will offer my services:
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Yep. There aren’t any.
I still don’t care what your wee comes out of; just don’t leave any on the toilet seat please.
My last blog post, confirming that I make wedding dresses etc for people of all sexes and genders, received a surprising amount of love for what I felt was simply a statement of the bleeding obvious.
So I hope I don’t lose any of that love by clarifying a couple of points. The first is about consent. When I said:
If thereβs consent in your relationship, thereβs no judgment, kink-shaming or awkward questions here.
I didn’t just mean consent in your relationship(s); I also meant with me.
I’ve had requests to make wedding dresses for individuals for whom wearing one is – their words – a sexual fantasy or fetish.
This isn’t an issue. Like I said, no judgment or kink-shaming here. UNLESS – and it is a big UNLESS – UNLESS you expect me to play an active role in the actual sexual experience.
There is a big difference between having me create a wedding dress with which you do what you want afterwards, and the fetishised experience of being measured, fitted and dressed in your gown – by me – for sexual gratification.
I understand that I am sexually irresistable but sorry, I’m not down with that.
Someone once called me to ask if I could provide a three-hour bridal dressing up experience – hair, make-up and all – to fulfil a sexual fantasy. I can’t whip up a wedding dress in that time (he thought I kept ready-made stock), and I don’t think he realised my studio is home-based.
Consequently, I didn’t get as far as asking what he expected me to actually be doing during this time, whether I would be there too or be sitting with my children in the next room until it was time to start the clean-up.
There are companies that provide such fantasy dress-up experiences, and I found one to recommend to him. If you’re interested, it was in Brighton but it was pre-Covid and I forget the name. You can Google it. Maybe don’t use your work laptop.
Anyway, I appreciate he actually asked me, i.e. sought my consent.
Unlike the next chap.
I can’t get into the psychology of flashers but this one felt one step away as he forced details of his fantasy on me (and several of my dressmaker friends is turned out), heavy breathing and sneering down the withheld number.
It started routinely enough: could I make two matching dresses. Of course.
One for his mum. Absolutely.
The other for him. No problem.
Because he enjoyed dressing up with her in her underwear and… I missed whatever the next bit was in all the heavy breathing and the sneering.
I think – I hope – I disappointed him by not being outwardly shocked. Instead I told I’d be very happy to, thanked him for being brave enough to share such personal details and that I’d be happy to send him payment details for the booking fee. But I’m still angry that he forced a sexual experience (for himself) on me without my consent, and did so again with others.
Anyway, I digress as I doubt this was actually a genuine inquiry. So, on to those.
Hit me with yours.
“Do you make wedding dresses for men?” To answer an increasingly FAQ, I make wedding dresses, veils, bridalwear* FULL STOP. For whoever wants it. Women, men, non-binary people, everyone.
I don’t care what your wee comes out of; just don’t leave any on my loo seat.
You are very welcome to, but don’t even have to, tell me how you identify, what you were assigned at birth or whether that differs now, whom, how many – or even whether – you’re marrying. If there’s consent in your relationship, there’s no judgment, kink-shaming or awkward questions here.
Oversharers are always welcome (hello, kindred spirits!) and the only things I ask all my customers to tell me relate purely to the tasks of designing something you will love and making sure it fits you perfectly:
1. Are you anticipating changing your weight, shape or size before you wear what I’m making you? These don’t make it impossible, but need to be factored in. For example, are/will you be:
2. What else will you be wearing? Bring everything to fittings that changes your shape, size or height including:
*I use the term bridalwear as loosely as possible because not all of my customers identify as brides. I try to use more inclusive terms where I can. I specialise in dresses and the traditionally more feminine styles of weddingwear such as dresses, veils, jumpsuits and separates rather than men’s suiting and tailoring and I’m still answerable to the SEO gods – I need people to find me! As language, attitudes and social mores evolve, this will change of course. In the meantime, I’m always happy to learn and stand corrected if I’m saying or doing something deplorable.
It’s official: the “un-bride” is in. This is ironic as it essentially means that not following trends is the trend.
The stylist soothsayers are stirring their big-data cauldrons this week and forecasting the wedding trends for 2024. Amid the peach fuzz and torn up seating plans, I was pleasantly surprised that for the second year, the crux according to my bellwether Vogue is that formality and traditions will take a backseat to individual style.
So you can keep your big data, front-row seats at Wedding Fashion Week and your cauldrons (but I wouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth) because I get to see what that actually means in practice. My customers tend to come to me when they have a good idea what they want but can’t find it in the shops – because it’s not something that would take off in the mainstream because not enough people would buy it.
And that’s the awesome thing.
So, based on what people have been asking me for over the last year, here’s what un-briding is looking like. The un-trends.
Here’s to the untrending trending.
My lovely friend Alex shared photos of her brother’s wedding last week, featuring the happy couple flanked by male family members clutching bouquets of broccoli.
It seems to be a growing trend in Asia. Alex’s new sister-in-law YaChun Yang (aka Allie) had seen a YouTuber in her native Hong Kong propose to her boyfriend with broccoli, and there are plenty of examples from Japan too (although I never saw it when I lived there 20-odd years ago).
I’m absolutely here for bouquets for all. They’ve only become associated with women/brides because they were originally composed of fragrant herbs to ward off evil spirits marauding for virgins. And as we know, all brides are virgins, because who in their right mind would marry a woman who wasn’t?
These days of course, wedding bouquets are more for aesthetics than their proficiency at repelling randy wraiths. Grooms and their parties usually wear flowers in their buttonholes, so it’s no great leap to give them something floral to hold and save them awkwardly twiddling their thumbs in the photos.
In Japan, where the garter toss has never taken hold, grooms now have their own bouquet to throw.
And why broccoli in particular? Some say the way it grows, with many stems branching out from the central stalk symbolises a growing family, and so brings fertility to whoever catches it. But don’t let that put you off; an alternative theory is that the nutrient-rich brassica simply brings good health.
But it doesn’t have to be broccoli. Ornamental cabbages are fairly common here in the UK and I’ve seen chillis used in bouquets and decor. A cauliflower or brightly coloured vegetable selection could also look elegant.
And there’s another benefit to clutching your five-a-day at your wedding: a vegetable bouquet would inflict a weighty blunt-force trauma to any lurking demon, should the bride or groom – both virgins of course – find themselves so accosted. π₯¦
I didn’t attend many weddings when I lived in Japan 20-odd years ago and only found out today that the traditional Japanese bridal head-dress, tsunokakushi (θ§ι γ), literally means HORN CONCEALER!
It was/is believed to hide the bride’s “horns” of jealousy, ego and selfishness, and is a sign of her commitment to be a gentle and obedient wife.
With the gorgeously ornate tsunokakushi worn by brides now, I imagine (read hope) that the origins of the tradition are somewhat lost, and wearing one is now more an aesthetic decision, much like the western wedding veil. But that’s for another blog post.
Either way, take this as another reminder that the world is full of wedding traditions and you only have to follow the ones that work for you. Traditions are just peer pressure from dead people.
Photo from M’s One beauty salon (coincidentally in Gifu, my nearest city when I lived in Japan) via Wedded Wonderland π
I’m disappointed.
Not in an epically understated way, like my gracious German cousins last week β½οΈπ.
More like when I go out for Chinese food and the main course never seems to live up to splendiferous platter of prawn toasts, satay chicken sticks, spring rolls and duck pancakes we had for the starter.
I blame husband. Not my husband, nor anyone else’s, but the word ‘husband’ itself. Specifically, its etymology. Because after I learned that it shares its origin with 007 and bondage for my last blog post, I had high hopes for its feminine counterpart.
Alas, ‘wife’ began its recorded life as Old English wif, meaning… wife.
However, ‘wif’ could also mean woman, irrespective of marital status. So I researched ‘woman’. And here I found my nugget of geek gold.
An anomalous quirk of English language evolution is that the word ‘wife’, i.e. a woman as a man’s possession (the predominant mentality of the time), predates ‘woman’ as a female person generally.
Disappointed AND retroactively outraged.
So I embroidered the shit out of a veil and felt much better.
Matron. Matriarch. Maternity. Matricide. All share a common root: the Latin ‘mater’, meaning mother. So why does ‘matrimony’ derive from the same?
As with many marriage traditions, the answer is in its patriarchal origins. Marriage was seen as literally the act of establishing a mother in the household.
Clearly this is problematic. It is male-centric, where the man is the active participant bringing the passive woman/mother figure into his domicile. It is hetero/cis-normative. It also assumes that every woman getting married wants to, and will, become a mother, not to mention that this is the primary purpose of marriage.
So, does this mean that technically only hetero/cis couples planning children can be joined in matrimony? Of course not. It’s not the 1300s, from when ‘matrimony’ was first recorded, spelled ‘matrymony’ at the time. Language evolves. Spellings and semantics change. Mercifully, so do (some) patriarchal social norms.
Helping brides whose wedding dresses were being made in Ukraine, AND their Ukranian dressmakers.
While Putin’s troops attacked Ukraine this week, two british brides contacted me. Both had ordered wedding dresses that were being made in Ukraine. Now this can no longer happen, they asked if I could make them instead.
I could have rubbed my hands with glee and snapped up the extra orders. But I shouldn’t profit from a loss of business from someone potentially losing everything, just because they happen to have had their country invaded this week, and I haven’t.
So I *think* I have figured out a way to help both the brides and their original dressmakers in Ukraine. I will make what they had ordered, for the same price. Then, after hard costs (fabric etc), I would donate the rest of the price to the ukranian dressmaker (if it was a small, independent operation like mine) or to the Disasters Emergency Committee (if it was a factory contracted by an international brand).
The first bride has just agreed and we tracked down her original, ukranian dressmaker on Etsy. Her name is Vera. She leads a small team and, her shop’s announcement tells us, is currently living in an underground shelter with her family.
As a stroke of genius, Vera created digital, downloadable postcards so people can donate directly. So I did.
I’d been wondering how the hell I could offer practical support in a war zone from the UK, with my skill set limited to making wedding dresses and writing the odd blog. I know what I’m doing* is a drop in the roaring ocean but it’s something. I hope.
ππΊπ¦π
If you or someone you know is in the same position as my two brides, please get in touch and I will help if I can.
To my fellow wedding industry pros, if you’re able to help by doing something similar, let’s work together.
*For what it’s worth, I have also donated to the DEC and encourage those who are willing and able to do the same.
I received a press inquiry this week asking whether couples should coordinate their wedding outfits. This question both resonated with and rankled me.
It was a well timed question; this week alone I’ve been working on coordinating outfits for three couples and it’s certainly something I’m seeing more of, for different reasons.
That said, my couple planning their traditional white wedding are also incorporating the same fabric for elements of their outfits. In this case, the bride is wearing a hooded cape and the groom a bowtie in the same pale pink velvet.
It can be a cultural, which is true for my bride and groom planning their Ghanaian-British fusion wedding. In Ghana, the bride and groom’s outfits are made from the same fabrics, which is what I’m doing for the them, making the bride’s dress from the same traditional kente fabrics as the groom’s outfit.
The third couple are both wearing black with custom embroidered motifs that tell each of their stories.
Now for why the question rankled. First, being for a western publication, it was inherently western-focused but this excluded the cultures and traditions of other countries that are honoured here, such as my British-Ghanaian couple.
I also (politely I hope) asked the journalist not to forget weddings involving two grooms, two brides or non-binary couples who I also see coordinating their outfits, probably more so than heterosexual couples.
And finally, the classic word “Should.” I don’t like to see “should” in any question about weddings, other than that the couple should love each other and should wear whatever the hell they want, matching or not. π
NB photos are not of my work or couples; their weddings are still to come so the details are top secret!
