The Most Beautiful Bride in the World

I used to wonder how one woman could see another in a wedding dress for the first time and proclaim, with such conviction, that she is “The most beautiful bride in the world”: a statement which is both highly unlikely and overwhelmingly cliché. We’ve seen it in films, time and time again…the initial intake of breath, hands clasped dramatically to chests, relatives beaming with pride and grandma scrambling for her travel tissues. But I’d always secretly assumed that in real life the scene would be more rational and downplayed than the melodrama we see on the screen.

I was wrong. I told myself I wouldn’t cry. I allowed myself the naïve assumption that I could withstand the emotion of it all. And thus, I went in unarmed…

The fitting was for my beautiful cousin Hannah who is marrying a wonderful man this September, and I was under the assurance that this was THE dress. So I sat alongside various female relatives in the airy reception area and waited for her to appear (obviously whilst scanning the hangers for my own wedding dress - hypothetical, of course, and assuming that I won’t die sad and alone. Although given my current romantic status, this is an alarming possibility).

She didn’t so much appear, as float: descending down the carpeted hallway, commanding the awed attention of everyone else in the small boutique. The dress was inexplicably beautiful, lovingly detailed and perfectly shaped…but it was the beaming smile on Hannah’s face that had my eyes filling in seconds.