My Turquoise Bag

Like many brides planning their wedding in early 2020, I didn’t get too far with wedding dress shopping by the time lockdown happened. Like many around the world, we postponed our wedding, and dress shopping was put on hold indefinitely.

That is until we eventually changed our minds, and decided to still get married this year. We changed our wedding vision from a Fall wedding in the city to an intimate family-only backyard wedding at the end of Summer.

This meant the vision for my wedding dress changed. Luckily I didn’t have to go that far. With just two months to plan our mini backyard wedding, I already had a dress in mind.

My “something borrowed”: my Mom’s wedding dress.

This dress was first worn in 1979, when my parents tied the knot in a politically-unstable Beirut. As a kid, I remember dreamily staring at my parents’ wedding pictures, swooning at the pink and purple flowers on my Mom’s wedding dress.

Since that early June wedding in Beirut, this dress had been neatly stored away in a closet in Lebanon. We started a new life in Canada, and 40 years later, by pure chance, my Mom brought this dress back when she went for a visit in the summer of 2019. I hadn’t even been proposed to yet.

Unbeknownst to any of us, this dress would save a future wedding in the middle of a pandemic.

Besides this dress holding deeply meaningful sentiment, I love that is authentically vintage, and is just so beautiful. It’s dreamy, elegant, feminine, whimsical and ethereal. Our photographer said I looked like a forest fairy.

This dress is something that I would have hand-picked myself.

But it was my Mom who hand-picked this, quite literally. She was presented with two wedding dress options by her aunt who owned a dress shop in Lebanon and used to bring back dresses from Paris. One option was a traditional white dress, and the other was an empire-waist dress with a flowing cape and pastel florals.

My Mom picked the dress with the flowing cape and colourful pastel florals.

When my Mom chose her wedding dress back in 1979, it’s almost as if she knew she’d have a bohemian daughter who would delight in flowers in her hair and sheer fabric flowing at her feet.

This dress was destined for two weddings.

This dress set the tone for our woodland theme.

Cedar trees were our backdrop as we shared our vows, and ivy leaves cascaded down wooden tree trunks as we swayed between them during our first dance.

This dress, and my Mom’s bridal style in general, inspired the little white flowers in my hair and the pastel colours of my whimsical bridal bouquet.

There’s undeniable magic in this dress.

Our guests marvelled at how this goddess-like this dress was, and how it fit me perfectly. “It’s so you!”, they exclaimed.

After going through our wedding photos, I couldn’t help but notice some striking similarity to my Mom’s wedding photos.

Some were truly like stepping back in time, twice.

I feel so proud and honoured to have worn my Mother’s vintage wedding dress for my own wedding. I felt whimsical and ethereal. I felt like me.

What I enjoyed the most about this experience was that I didn’t even have to stress about finding a dress in the short amount of time we had.

This dress was waiting for me.

To me, this dress is a symbol of connection, longevity, future, love, family, beauty and hope.

Thank you, Mom. 💕✨