To sell or keep your wedding dress?

Most people sound surprised when I tell them that I'm selling my wedding dress.

"Don't you want to keep it?"

"What if your daughter wants to wear it?"

"I bet you'll wish you had it when you're an old lady."

Maybe they're right.  It is not an easy choice.  I am attached to it.  

However, it also bothers me, hanging there in my closet, taking up so much space for the sake of the past.  My real attachment is to the memories, the pictures, the day.  The actual dress is just one piece that happens to take up a gigantic amount of space in my bedroom's "quaint" 1950s closet.

While I understand the logic of keeping it, I also romanticize the idea of it living on as part of someone else's special day.  Perhaps it will be like the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants but with a wedding dress between strangers.  I almost imagine it becoming its own story, a book even.  Living on from love story to love story.  Ending its life well-used, tattered in some thrift store until someone finds it and decides to reinvent it again.  Maybe I have too much hope for my little old dress.

The hippie in me likes the idea of selling it though.  Let someone else use it again.  Reduce, reuse, recycle.

I know there is a chance I'll miss it, but I also enjoy the small act of rebellion in not holding onto it.  We'll see.  Someone actually has to buy it first.  

When I went shopping for a wedding dress, I thought I wanted something understated, tea length maybe.  I almost bought a vintage Audrey-Hepburnesque dress that hit at the knees.  I anticipated the shock value of defying tradition.  However, no other day in my life would I ever have the excuse to revel in such pageantry.  I didn't even want to try this dress on, but my sister Kaitlyn convinced me, and once it was on, I was happy.  Now, it would be cool if this dress could make someone else feel the same way!