A "Titanic" Wedding Disaster

by Diane, mother of the bride

Newly updated with an addendum from Kerry, the daughter of Diane, regarding the ongoing saga of the Titanic dresses from hell and photo of the wedding party!

My daughter got married last weekend and I thought I would share this horror story with everyone. Since I am well aware that no one in this newsgroup needs the added stress of hearing a wedding horror story, let me say up front that we did have a happy ending!! The flowers were great , the bride was gorgeous and smiling happily, the ceremony itself was beautiful and went off without a hitch. The reception was fun even if a bit disorganized. The food was great, the cake beautiful, and everyone danced until we finally had to push them out the doors at closing time! After what we had been through that day, even the best man's attack of stage fright and total inability to deliver his prepared toast was only an amusing moment! So . . . my intent in telling this tale is not to send everyone into a tailspin of worry about their own plans but to show that even what seems like an insurmountable disaster can be overcome and the wedding can still be a beautiful event. Besides, it is just too incredible a story to keep to myself!

My daughter had set her wedding date early last spring and began all the planning in plenty of time. Her fiance's mother is a seamstress and had volunteered to make the bridesmaids dresses. Over the years my daughter dated her son, she had done dresses for several wedding and costumes for many dance programs. She had done a small sewing job for me, a casual dress for my daughter, and had done the bridesmaids dresses and bridal gown for a friend of my daughter. They were a simple design and looked fine, so I felt she was qualified. Then my daughter saw the movie "Titanic" and decided she wanted the dinner dress for her bridesmaids. It was a more complicated dress but I thought it was very pretty and a welcome change from the standard satin-with-a-big-butt-bow bridesmaids dress. It is a simple satin dress with a tiered overskirt of black chiffon that is beaded and sequined. The dress in the movie has a coral under-skirt but my daughter wanted it done in blue.

I was a little concerned about this ambitious choice of a dress and came to this newsgroup and asked if anyone knew where to find a pattern for the dress. I was directed to a web page where I was offered an opportunity to get patterns made according to each of the bridesmaids individual measurements. (4 bridesmaids, 1junior bridesmaid. The 2 flower girls would have dresses made of the same blue satin but without the black chiffon overskirt.) My daughter passed on to her future mother-in-law that I would get the patterns if she wanted them but she said she wouldn't need them. Since she did a lot of sewing of creative dance costumes, I believed her when she said she could adapt a simple pattern for the dress itself and recreate the chiffon overskirt (with no train) without problems. My big concern was the amount of time it would take to add all the beading and sequins.

The summer slipped by and I began to get really concerned about getting the dresses started. I was reassured that she had not taken on any other sewing jobs for the fall in order to do these dresses. As the weeks slipped by I began nagging my daughter in earnest about pushing her to get the girls measured and the fabric ordered and that was finally done. Needless to say, the fabric took longer to come in than expected so it was 5 weeks before the wedding before she got it. A week later I found out she still hadn't started them!

I was terribly concerned by then and called her two days later. I suggested that perhaps the dresses were too ambitious an undertaking but she again assured me there would be no problem. I will never understand why I didn't scream bloody murder at that point or forgive myself for not taking action then. I won't prolong this with details of the things that kept me from stepping in and taking over or try to explain why my daughter didn't see disaster looming. Let's just say that with all the other things that needed to the done, it was necessary to trust someone else with part of the job. And after all, she was an experienced seamstress. Who would know better about the time needed? Along with that was the simple fact that she was my daughter's future mother-in-law and had a personal stake in turning out nice dresses for the occasion: All her relatives and friends would be there and would know she had made them.

Well, she finally started on the dresses and I was somewhat relieved but even so, something in the back of my mind was saying "What is Plan B?" On my trips to the mall, I began looking through the racks of formal wear with the idea that we might have to spend the last week or two finding other dresses.

Over the next weeks, I spoke to her a couple of times and she assured me all was going well. We arranged to bring my other daughter who was flying home to be a bridesmaid over for her fitting on the Monday before the wedding. When we arrived for that fitting I was horrified to find only the satin dresses put together! No chiffon, no sequins! I would have panicked then but she (the seamstress/future MIL) was totally calm and had no concerns about finishing them. I knew by that point the dresses were not going to be as detailed and rich with sequins and beads as I had hoped (and I really didn't care if the sequins were glued rather than sewn) but I still felt the dress itself, even if rather plain, would be attractive. We arranged to pick up the dress for my daughter at the rehearsal dinner.

I left there feeling nauseous but helpless. It was far too late to do anything but hope they would all get done and if they didn't we would just have to cut down the number of attendants. Needless to say, I did not sleep all that week. That week was so busy with all the last minute details, relatives from out of town arriving and reception hall to be decorated. Thursday night arrived and we went to the rehearsal You guessed it -- the bridesmaids dresses weren't quite done. She didn't like the way the sequins were laid out and was moving them. Actually, that was rather reassuring. At least she was taking some pains to get it to look right! So the dress could be picked up Friday at noon - the day of the wedding.

On Friday morning my husband and two sisters went to decorate the reception hall and pick up the dress while my daughters (bride and bridesmaid) got their hair done. We were to be at the church at 5:00, photos to begin at 5:30 and ceremony at 6:30. At a little before 1:00, they returned home with the dress. We gathered around for the grand unveiling - bride, MOB, FOB, sister, 2 aunts, grandmother.

I was realistically prepared from the beginning for the dresses to be less than the gorgeous dress in the movie. By this point, I was also prepared for them to be hastily made with little attention to seam finishing and such. I was prepared for them to be plain, even prepared for them to be not very pretty. Hell, I was prepared for them to be very disappointing. But I was in no way prepared for the absolute horror that was unveiled.

The dress we uncovered was not just unattractive, it was hideous. It is impossible to convey in writing how awful it was. Cheap, trashy, ugly, garish. Instead of sequins and beads in a delicate pattern edging the tiers and bodice, there were machine sewn strings of big, gaudy silver sequins in swoops marching across the tiers. The tiers were not the flattering cascade draped across the front but a lopsided row of heavy tiers. The back was a drape of black chiffon pulled to one side like a curtain on a tieback. (The biggest, ugliest butt-bow would have been an welcome improvement!) There were unclipped threads hanging and the ends of the sequins strands were already coming loose. When I try to explain how bad it was, people get the general idea, but even as much as I can say about it, they are still shocked when they see it! (If you want, drop me a line and I'll email a jpeg to you. Even that won't do it. You need a scratch'n'sniff picture to appreciate the way it reeked of cigarette smoke.) It looked like a Halloween costume or something made by a kid in her first attempt at making a dress for her Barbie doll, or perhaps a costume made for a summer camp production of a Las Vegas musical.

I bet that some of you are thinking "Oh, it was just a joke. That old teaser of a mother-in-law! She made that one up out of scraps and sent it along for fun!"

No, it was no joke. I wish it had been.

And I'll bet that some of you who are dealing with a "mother-in-law from Hell" are thinking that she did it on purpose to sabotage the wedding. Although they are not particularly close, my daughter has always had a friendly relationship with her future mother-in-law and in my dealings with her I saw absolutely no evidence that she was devious or even remotely capable of such cruelty. I can only attribute it to a lack of taste and skill. She said later that she had not been happy with the way the dresses turned out, but in looking at the dress it is almost impossible to conceive of someone thinking it would be acceptable as a bridesmaid dress. It does reflect more of a "costume" look than a bridesmaid fashion one and perhaps it is simply that she is used to working with costumes and so it didn't look so awful to her. That is the best I can do as far as coming up with a reason for her thinking it was even remotely acceptable.

Well, you can all imagine how awful that moment was for my daughter. Months of wedding planning around a theme of these turn of the century dresses, selection of colors for flowers, decorations, invitations all based on the dresses. All shot to Hell in a split second. There was no way the bridesmaids could wear these atrocities and we had 4 hours before the wedding.

The room was silent as we all viewed this disaster. I don't recall who spoke first but my daughter could only choke out "That is nothing like it was supposed to be!"

Someone suggested that we could try redoing the sequins.

"No," I said. "They are not wearing THAT!"

Someone said "Maybe if we took the sequins off entirely . . ."

Everyone was appalled by the dress but hanging on to some hope it could be fixed simply because they couldn't imagine changing dresses at this point. I could because I had lain awake nights worrying about the dresses not being done. I had even imagined that they would be disappointing enough that we would have to decide whether we would use them. I had envisioned having to change to an off-the-rack dress, but I had imagined we would have a day or so notice, not 4 hours!

"No," I said. "They are NOT wearing that! We are going to the mall, find whatever we can for whichever bridesmaids we can. You may end up with only one or two bridesmaids, but THEY ARE NOT WEARING THAT! "

My daughter was just overwhelmed with the idea of having to tell 5 or 6 attendants and groomsmen they were out of the wedding and objected, but I saw no alternative. She started to cry, but grabbed the phone to try to call her bridesmaids and ran out of the room. Someone suggested it might look better when tried on, or maybe we could see better how to fix it. I disagreed but my daughter (the bridesmaid) grabbed the dress to go try it on.

I said "Fine. But do it fast because every minute you spend on that THING is less time to get to the mall and THEY ARE NOT WEARING THAT!"

Once on, the dress looked worse if that was possible. It was obvious that there was no way it could be worn without major overhaul. Someone suggested taking the black chiffon overlay off entirely but a quick check showed that would leave the neck line and arm openings unfinished and there was no time for that kind of work on one dress, much less 7. (No one even suggested that perhaps the little flower girl dresses would be ok. Even though they were supposed to be simpler designs, what we were looking at was so bad we didn't have any real hope for them either! ) The satin dress underneath was no more than a plain sheath anyway. As I had thought from the first moment, everyone finally agreed that this dress was simply not salvageable.

The bride came back, red eyed but miraculously in control. "Be sure you have all the credit cards" I said to my husband. "We are leaving," I said to everyone else. "Get in the car. NOW!" We did, leaving only my mom behind to wait for some other family members due to arrive at anytime. During the 15 minute drive to the mall, the bride used the car phone to keep trying to reach the bridesmaids. She reached her MOH but she was headed out the door to get her hair done. We told her to go ahead with that and we would get whatever we could for dresses and bring them to the church. The other bridesmaids had already left to get their hair done and she couldn't reach them.

We quickly laid out a plan. We knew that if we split up we could cover more stores but would waste a lot of time trying to reconnect and report findings. Since there were only 4 large department stores in the mall we decided to just stay together. We would find one or two possible dresses, and buy them in as many sizes as available. Our 4 bridesmaids ranged in size from 8 to 18. The junior bridesmaid was 11 years old and the flower girls 3 and 6. I had reasonable hope of finding white dresses for the flower girls, but figured the junior bridesmaid simply wasn't going to happen.

Bride, MOB, FOB, bridesmaid, and 2 aunts descended on the mall like troops storming the beach. In order to really appreciate the moment, you need to know that I am disabled and use a scooter. My voice is weak and I have minimal arm movement. But as we entered the mall, I turned into "The Shopper From Hell." I bellowed out instructions they had no trouble hearing, charged through the aisles sending other shoppers scattering and tolerated no lagging from the troops!

We entered the mall at Sears because I knew from my earlier reconnoitering that they had the largest selection of formal dresses of the 4 stores. The 2 "better" stores had more expensive dresses but fewer in stock. My sister grabbed a sales clerk, explained the situation, and 5 clerks sprang into action. We quickly found one dress that was a possibility and sent my bridesmaid daughter to try it on. While she did that, we continued to look. I spotted a dress that was an electric blue metallic fabric with an overlay of black "lace". It was more a geometric design, almost like a crochet design rather than a floral lace, but a flat fabric, not yarn. The dress was a simple sheath style, sleeveless, floor length. There were no sequins or beads but the metallic fabric sparkled through the lace. Even though the style was very modern, the lace pattern gave it a classic old look too. It was a dress that would work and work well and, incredibly, there was a full range of sizes up to 18 on the rack.

"This one" I yelled and one was hustled off to the dressing room. She put it on, it fit and looked great. With the black shoes and long white gloves we had picked out to go with the original dress, it would be great even if the shade of blue was not a great match for the flowers and groomsmen's vests. We grabbed an assortment of sizes, then spent a few minutes picking out two additional dresses for the MOH just in case the one we had didn't fit her well as she was large busted. They were different styles but we figured that it was common for the MOH to be dressed a little differently from the bridesmaids. We left my husband behind to pay (thank God for credit cards!), called the waiting and worried grandmother on the cell phone and told her the beachhead was established and the tide of battle in our favor, then headed upstairs to the children's department.

They had no white dresses but we found some blue flowery ones for the flower girls and bought a full range of sizes for them. We found a nice dress for the junior bridesmaid but I was not especially happy with the way it looked with the other dresses. If the MOH ended up wearing one of the alternate style dresses, we could end up with 4 different styles between 7 attendants. But we bought a couple of sizes of it anyway and then set out for Penney's. Ecstatic with our success at finding ANY dresses, we flew across the mall, and by this time we were laughing like idiots! Nothing like an adrenaline rush to make you giddy!

At Penney's we immediately spotted a little girl's dress with a black velvet bodice and blue satin skirt with black flowers. Although the shade of blue was not an exact match for the bridesmaids dresses, the overall effect was good. The blue and black theme was there and although it was not floor length, it was as dressy as the bridesmaids. Of course it was not available in the size needed for the junior bridesmaid and once again I mentally wrote her off the list of attendants, but someone spotted a dress that was the reverse of the flower girls -- blue bodice with black flowers and a black satin skirt! If the dresses fit, we had us a full wedding party! We took 2 sizes of that and headed back to the car. We had purchased 18 dresses and spent $1200 in less than an hour!

It was just after 3 when we got home. There were a few things to do yet, things we had thought we would have all afternoon to attend to. Like eating a lunch that would hold us until the reception, folding the programs, polishing shoes kind of things. And of course there was the usual last minute frantic "search-for-the-shopping-bag-with -someone's-pantyhose" kind of thing. Somehow it all got done and we started packing up everything that needed to go with us and getting dressed. The bride continued to try to reach the other bridesmaids but with no success, and she couldn't reach the groom either.

I realized I should call the mother-in-law. I needed to explain what we had done so she wouldn't walk into an awkward surprise. We had already recognized the possibility that she would be very upset and the possibility that the entire groom's family could be sitting stony faced and angry through the wedding and reception. (They hadn't seen the dresses!) I was furious with her for not getting at least one done far enough in advance to avoid this nightmare, angry that she had not admitted days earlier that she wasn't able to do the dresses even remotely close to the plan, REALLY angry with myself for having let it reach this point, bewildered at how she could have thought for even one moment that these dresses were suitable, and yet very much aware that this would be really embarrassing for her. As upset as I was, I had no desire to humiliate her in front of her whole family.

All I could do would be to explain as tactfully as possible that we hadn't been "as happy with the dresses as we had hoped" and had opted to look for something else. This was just not the time to tell her what I really thought! But because of my disabilities I cannot use a regular phone and there simply was no one available to help me into my chair at the computer desk so I could use that phone. Everyone was rushing around frantically trying to get everything finished and get themselves dressed. I decided calling her was a lot further down on my list of priorities than getting myself dressed, makeup on, etc., a job that would take all my remaining time and require a lot of help from people who already had too much too do. And the bride simply did not need any more stress. I didn't even suggest that she make the call.

We made it to the church just before 5. The rest of the bridesmaids were waiting, filled in by the MOH and wearing that "deer in the headlights" look of an innocent bystander caught in a horrible situation. In the dressing room I briefly explained what we had done and why. I told them to go through the dresses, try them on, and then we would decide who would be in the wedding based on who could be outfitted. They each grabbed one of the dresses, and it was incredible -- They all fit! We had all 4 bridesmaids! The size 8 needed a little quick basting to snug up the back and keep bra straps from showing but otherwise they were all set!

The flower girls arrived and of course they looked adorable in their new dresses. They were granddaughters of the seamstress/MIL so I wondered what their mother thought but she simply dressed them without comment. The junior bridesmaids arrived -- another granddaughter. Her mother took one looked at the new dresses and said "Thank God!" She said she had not seen the original dresses until late that morning and when she did she simply did not know what to say to her mother. She knew they were not at all what my daughter was expecting. (She didn't go so far as to flat out say she thought they were awful, but I think that is what she thought.) She said she had agonized all afternoon about whether to call my daughter and warn her but simply didn't know what else could be done at that point.

With the attendants all outfitted and looking great, I left them to help the bride with her dress and veil and went out to await the arrival of the mother-in-law. I attended to a number of details with the church's wedding coordinator, (flowers in the church, corsages, programs, and so on) and by that time, the photographer was there to take the pre-ceremony pictures. By the time I was free again it was about a quarter till 6 -- and the mother-in-law had not arrived yet! I wasn't sure what was holding her up. She should have been there at 5 with the dresses! I wondered if someone had gotten in touch with her and told her about the change and worried that she was too upset or angry to even show up. Or maybe she didn't know and was at home stitching furiously to finish them. One of her daughters was there and I had her dial the phone for me but there was no answer and we assumed she was on her way.

By 6:15, guests were arriving and because of the logistics of using a wheelchair, I had to take my place at the front of the church. I am not sure when she finally got there, but she didn't look upset when she and her husband took their seats. I found out later that she HAD brought the dresses so she hadn't been told what had happened! Her son, the groom, was the one who told her. He wasn't happy about being the one to do it, but she was so late in getting there, I couldn't. I still don't know why she was so late. If we had used those dresses, she would have really screwed things up! None of the pre-ceremony photography could have been done. The bridesmaids would have had only minutes to get dressed. Even if she had somehow missed the instructions given (be at the church by 5 and ready for the photographers by 5:30) common sense and experience should have told her the dresses needed to be there more than a few minutes ahead of the 6:30 ceremony time! It was just unbelievable. Any concerns I had about sparing her feelings evaporated and I didn't care who broke the news to her or how.

By the time the ceremony was over, I had regained my cool and when I met her outside the church I waited for her to say something about the dresses. She didn't say a word. She was friendly and we chatted about how cute the flower girls were! I was so emotionally and physically exhausted by that point I just decided to go along with it and pretend nothing had happened. We talked briefly and cordially several times during the reception and the subject of the dresses never came up. Eventually my daughter will have to spend time with her again and I suppose the subject will come up, but I have no intention of contacting her. If she weren't my daughter's mother-in-law, I would call and, at the very least, demand she repay me the $380 I paid for the fabric. But for my daughter's sake, I will just drop it and be glad we were able to replace the dresses at the last minute.

So, there you have it. A tale to chill any prospective bride to the bones. My advice to one and all is simple - if you are worried about something that is showing signs of not going right, trust your instincts and intervene even if everyone else is saying "it will be fine." And if your mother is driving you nuts with her worrying and nagging, LISTEN TO HER!!!

Diane

Update from Kerry, the daughter of Diane:

Hi! This is Diane's daughter, the unfortunate bride who was the victim of the Titanic Wedding disaster! I just wanted to drop you a line for a little update on how things went after "the tragedy". It has been over 2 years and, contrary to my mother's predictions, the subject of the dresses has never come up. People have asked me what became of the dresses. I have no idea! I have not seen them in her sewing room, not even as scrap material. (Which really is unfortunate, since everyone wanted to wear their's as Halloween costumes! Add a little seaweed, make-up to look like frosty corpses, maybe a life preserver around the neck with the words "R.M.S. Titanic" on it . . .)

Basically, it's like we're pretending it never happened. Even when her youngest daughter got married last summer, and we were discussing wedding problems, not a word. . .

Attached is a picture of how the wedding party actually turned out. Not too bad, considering the time limit we had! Maybe the guys' vests don't really match the bridesmaids' dresses anymore, but oh well! I've told people who attended the wedding the whole story, and they said they had no idea that the dresses weren't what we had planned. I guess we pulled it off after all!

-Kerry

Page Last Updated May 14, 2007