The Preamble to A Processional

When I thought about a processional, the only thing I felt strongly about was that I would want both parents to escort me down the ailse. I thought it was a fantastic gesture of support for the equality in the modern relationship and certainly the parenting relationship. Then I realized that I did not want to pick between my cousins nor friends for bridesmaids, nor did I like the term 'maids'. So I thought perhaps I would only have two children, although it was probably this picture that triggered it all for me. This was back in a day when I wanted a seafoam and chilli red wedding. Seafoam is probably the colour between the jadeite green and the blue you see here, it's sort of a restoration hardware blue.


I imagined barefeet children with their hair swept under vintage flowered handbands. I wanted casual, offbeat flower girl dresses that made them look like children on the beach, not sweaty satin cummerband ones that would make them look like christmas card children. Rather than a macronage crochet, I though I would make the little capelets out of a clear white lace from my own wedding dress.


In fact, the lady whose wedding this was, actually has a children's wear line. I really liked the simple white band edging and the gathers, though the design for the girl's dresses was simple enough that I thought I would just get it tailored in Singapore.


As it turned out, that's not quite the way the story went. One day, while puttering around in Raffles City, I walked into one of my favourite kid's stores for natural, breezy but tailored children's clothing. I saw a rather similar dress, a simple white chiffon layered dress that I would have loved to wear myself. I thought I would top it with capelets but at the end of the day, that just seemed too much material, so I gathered up the scrap lace from my wedding dress alteration and sewed on shoulder strap ruffles so their dresses would more match mine.


In the end, the question of bridesmaids was also settled for me. When the summer JCrew catalogue came out, three of my close friends independantly chose and bought the same dress. The odds of this happening, for girls who have never really liked the same clothes, boys or activities, is slim to none and I guess we immediately decided they couldn't be worn in the same place, except in a processional. Luckily, my cousin who is my maid-of-honour/coodinator's had chosen a blue dress too and my mom a blue-and-white ming vase cheongsum.