My Mother's Lace
She was married in it in 1989. Thirty-seven years later, in the same courtyard, so was I — and the alterations took longer than the engagement.
My mother kept her wedding dress in a suitcase under her bed for thirty-seven years, wrapped in a bedsheet, which every restorer I later spoke to described as a small miracle rather than a method.
I did not plan to wear it. I went dress shopping properly, twice, in two cities. Everything was beautiful and nothing was hers. On the third fitting I asked to see the suitcase again.
The lace had yellowed unevenly and the bodice was built for a nineteen-year-old with a different ribcage than mine. A restorer in Weibdeh took it apart over eleven weeks. She kept the original lace panels at the front and the sleeves, rebuilt the entire understructure, and replaced nothing that could be saved.
What surprised me was how modern it looked when it was finished. Not costume, not vintage in the ironic sense — just a very well-made dress that happened to have been cut before I was born.
My mother cried in the fitting room, which I expected. What I did not expect was that she cried again at the courtyard, in the same spot, and that my grandmother's sister recognised the sleeves from across the garden.
If you are considering it: start a year out, find a restorer before you find an alterations tailor, and accept that the dress will not fit the photograph in your head. It will fit something better than that.
Rania K. in Amman. Shared with the Ammanista community.
