Wedding sandals.(First Person)(wedding memories)

 
   Shadowy kangaroos moved off 
   as we drove into the top paddock 
   coming home from a wedding 
   under a midnightish curd sky ... 
 
--Les Murray, "The Moon Man" 

I

THE YEAR I got married there was no summer to speak of. It was the first time I could remember a Christmas Day which had been cool and blustery, the first time January did not afford me the luxurious hot weather I so loved, the air brimming with humidity, late afternoon thunderstorms crackling through the sky. But there was to be a rite of passage of another kind: the date change signalling our imminent entry into a new millennium. Y2K. That would have to be enough.

We had been married first in the Registry Office on November 19, 1999, and were to have a church wedding on February 20, 2000. The first had been to get all the official and legal matters done with; the second was to be the ceremony that really meant something to me.

So why, after having expected a white satin-and-lace wedding all my life, did I end up with a traditional Ukrainian ceremony instead? How many times had I envied brides dressed like powder-puffs, wearing yards of silk studded with pearls? How many times had I witnessed that precious moment of entry into the church, the princess-like beauty, stunning in a designer gown, walking demurely down the aisle to the sounds of the Wedding March?

Admittedly all my knowledge of wedding etiquette had come from the movies. Elizabeth Taylor had been a role model in the Hollywood classic Father of the Bride. Remember Julie Andrews in that Salzburg cathedral? The camera zooms in on the groom's face as he stares fixedly with devotion, then pans to show a panoramic view of the bride's beautiful white veil trailing behind her. Need I mention the effect Lady Diana Spencer had had when in 1981 she walked down that aisle to marry her prince? That year I turned seventeen. Along with all the other adolescent girls of the Commonwealth, the stamp of a royal wedding had been imprinted in my mind. Here was a wedding in real life that looked just like those in the movies. Life was imitating art.

So why then, when I started thinking about what I should wear, did I discard all those defining features I knew so well, one by one? A Scarlett O'Hara taffeta gown gathered tightly in at the waist, exploding into a mass of frills and netting that would sweep the floor as I walked? No. Something more sophisticated, made of satin with a straight long skirt, square neckline and pointed bosom, with a retro 1940s or 1950s look? No. Something avant-garde perhaps, like those ridiculous frocks featured in bridal magazines, the kind no one would ever really wear, made of see-through curtain material with an obscenely short mini-skirt? No, no, no. Well then, what is it I want? What is that image floating around in the back of my mind, drifting into semi-consciousness as I'm falling asleep and beginning to dream?