On Getting Married in a Nightgown

Times may be trying our bindings
Hard days may steal half our smile
This world goes by in a hurry
Kind words are farther and few

Sometimes the going gets rocky
Somewhere in memories we share
There's still a sweet place I never will forget
I made a promise to you ...

All My Love, Tish Hinojosa

I made my promise to Tom wearing a nightgown (which came up in our discussion of

our society's ceaseless, unrealistic quest for perfection).

No one knew.

Except for Tom and my friend Michelle.

Here's how it happened.

I was 27. Tom was 30. We were both in advertising and had planned events. Therefore we planned our wedding ourselves which Tom paid for

• Checked out Lover's Lane Methodist Church and booked the chapel. (I was agnostic, Tom was a nonpracticing Catholic, and his devoutly Catholic mother didn't murmur a word ... which is how I figured out later that she liked me, after I became Catholic myself.)
  
• Tried the tasting menu at Mariano's (back when it was in Old Town), pronounced it excellent, and booked the back room for late Saturday morning. Seafood nachos and fajitas for all! Back then fajitas were an up and coming trendy item.
  
• Eschewed traditional wedding cake and ordered a delicious sponge cake from the Black Forest Bakery covered with whipped cream, featuring nuts on the sides and prettily arranged fruit on top. (Also got a birthday cake for my sis there, as she generously agreed to share her birthday by being my bridesmaid.)
  
• Tom planned and booked a honeymoon at Banff and Lake Louise in Canada (don't do it in May, everything is frozen, but being in Texas we didn't know that ...).
• Ordered flowers from the latest chic place that our marketing department used (I worked at The Dallas Market Center's advertising department at that time). As I didn't want a veil, they said they'd work out a nice headpiece ... and they did. I told them the colors, trusted them with the flower selection and they did a fantastic job.
• Tom took care of tux ordering although I think we both went to see what was there.
• My hair was permed by a friend who had been a hairdresser before her retirement.
  
• An artist friend designed our invitations and a printer friend threw them on the tail end of a print job (I bought all the DMC's promotional printing back then which was close to a million dollar budget ... handy, eh?)
  

And then the dress...
Not knowing a thing, I went to the neighborhood wedding dress store a couple of months before the wedding. I was literally laughed out of the store. Literally. Laughed. Out. Of. The. Store.

Not knowing what to do but knowing that I HAD TO HAVE A DRESS I went to my good friend Michelle. She said, "I'm going to tell you the secret of the women in my family. Whenever there is an event we have to buy a special dress for we go to Neiman Marcus's lingerie store."

This didn't sound right but I had nowhere else to turn so off we went. After perusing the nightgowns I was feeling desperate but Michelle chased down a sales woman. Upon hearing the problem the woman said delightedly, "You won't believe this but just yesterday a salesman was showing us a line of nightgowns designed to be worn for evening wear as well."

Well, bring it on!

It was an absolutely ugly nightgown.

However, with the thick ivory colored fabric draping down to midcalf, the sleeves pushed up to bell around the elbows, and the neckline worn around the shoulders ... it was simple and beautiful. The sales woman ran to the shoe department and brought back ivory lace high heels and sheer hosiery, both of which matched the gown fabric exactly. I stopped by a fabric store later and picked up some satiny ribbon which matched and wore it around my waist as a belt which tied in the back. I think the nightgown was $250 which was outrageous for a nightgown but unbelievable for a lovely wedding gown.

A miracle, had I believed in them. Never was I so relieved. Another friend talked the jewelry store owner where we bought our wedding rings into letting me borrow a twisted rope of pearls to wear. Tom bought me the matching earrings as a wedding gift.

The entire thing, including rings and honeymoon, was $5,000. Which bought more then than it does now, naturally, but which was still a complete bargain. We got by with a little help from our friends

Michelle and I lost touch when she and her husband moved back to New York but I still think of her fondly. In fact, here they are in this photo where you can see more of the flowers in my hair and the earrings Tom gave me. My mother said that I looked as if I stepped off a Greek urn and I think she was right. No one ever knew about the nightgown ... thank you Michelle, where ever you are!