Everyone always asks me what my wedding “colors” were. I love weddings. I love wedding colors. But, um, I didn’t have any.

My entire wedding consisted of just 14 people in a private, family ceremony on Mackinaw Island, overlooking Lake Michigan. I had one bridesmaid, my sister. I was lucky in the sense that I didn’t have to fit both the tastes and body types of a ton of bridesmaids. She was lucky in the sense that I know her taste. She is plain, simple and subtle. Nothing bright. Nothing flashy. Nothing shiny or sparkley or glittery or sequiny. It was limiting, but I love her.

So, I guess my wedding color was beige. LOL. I found her a simple taupe tank dress/sheeth with an even simpler gauzy overlay. It rocked the word subtle and gave simple a run for its money. In other words, it was perfect - for her. My dress was officially called “rum pink” and all the other female guests (all five of them) wore shades of white, ivory, pink and peach. 

Oddly enough, she was away in the Peace Corps when we got engaged. My mom and I actually shipped a tape measure to her via the only method at the time, “slow boat”. It took forever. Ok, forever and a day. Once she received it, she had some other ex pats take her measurements and then she called it in to her supervisor in D.C., who let my mom know.

If you think that was tricky, she arrived home three days before the actually wedding. I picked her up at the airport, hugged her to bits because I hadn’t seen her in two years and then drove straight to the seamstress’ personal atelier. She freelanced out of the bridal salon and had this cute little, one room studio overlooking a park where she actually worked.

The dress fit perfect, literally flawlessly. The hem was intentionally left unfinished to give each seamstress the fabric she needed, so that was fixed but, other than that, nothing needed to be done. My sister is tall and well-endowed so finding clothes to fit is always trickier, but this time we lucked out. We picked up the dress less than 36 hours later and drove the 5.5 hours to Mackinaw Island. It all came together but, boy, was it close.