Fast forward to July 7, 2008. We're standing on the unfinished fourth level of a building on the base, watching the world around us flood. Turns out The Accountant wasn't so high and mighty as I expected him to be. He shook like jello when he asked me to marry him. I of course said yes.
We were married six months later, at a beautiful house his parents owned in Queretaro, Mexico. Our wedding was perfect despite a few bridezilla moments and cultural differences. In the US our tradition is that the bride's father pays for the wedding, and the bride plans it. In Mexico, the groom's family pays and the groom plans the wedding. We were all prepared to have a small wedding here in the states. and being the DIYer that I am, we were going to make everything ourselves. My father-in-law stepped in and offered to pay for our wedding if we would have it in Mexico. We agreed, but there was a minor problem - they hired a wedding planner.
Ugg... She was awful. She changed my colors. The table cloths looked like hospital gowns. She put bamboo and paper lanterns everywhere in spite of my having expressly forbid them on the first meeting with her. Despite it all, our wedding was lovely. I can't say that any of that matters too much seven years later, what matters most is the seven years since then. But back to the story.
The weather was perfect. We held the ceremony in the "garage" area, a courtyard with a fountain and ceramic tiled platform. The reception was held in the back yard. The weather couldn't have been more perfect. Even in Mexico December is cold. Typically it's a cold, yucky, rainy month where everyone hides in their concrete ice box houses and huddles up in their giant winter coats since there is no heat anywhere. Our wedding day was sunny, gorgeous, warm, and the last perfect day before the yuck season hit!
My dress was gorgeous. It had this long train on it that I call the dragon tail, I had to keep kicking it around behind me when we danced. I'm short, too, so even though we hemmed the dress, it still dragged on the ground. I don't know how many times it was stepped on, dragged through the dirt, etc. One of my Mother-in-law's good friends is an amateur photographer, and unbeknownst to us had decided to shoot our wedding. All I knew is that as we floated dreamily away from the cake we had just cut, hand in hand, something jerked me up short, and "that lady with the camera" had stepped on my train!
That was just one of the many minor accidents my lovely dress suffered. It wasn't as bad as the stain remover commercials where they slow motion spill grape juice on the bride, but it was obvious my dress had been worn and well worn. Being the happy bride I was, at that time I didn't care. The next day my dress was jammed into a garment bag, and left at our new love nest while we ran off on our honeymoon. There it stayed as day passed into night, night to day... Weeks slipped away into months, months into years. Grass stains, mud, makeup and other grime all slowly became one with the fibers of my beautiful once white wedding dress.
It was probably when we moved the first time and emptied the cave that was our spareroom/storage room that we thought about my dress. By that time it had already been jammed into the garment bag for months. It was never dry cleaned. Of course we felt the need to salvage the poor dress, which at that time was probably the most expensive item I owned. We checked into dry cleaning prices. The cheapest we could find was 500 pesos (about $50 USD at that time). The Accountant and I were very poor when we were married. 500 pesos was the grocery budget for a week. We didn't have that kind of money to throw away on dry cleaning a dress I had no immediate plans for. And so my dress sat, gathering dust, crumpled up in its garment bag.
Fast forward. The Accountant and I have been married for 6 years. 10 days before our 2nd wedding anniversary The Accountant was granted his US Visa, and we have lived in the states for 4 years. I can't even remember how my wedding dress got to the states. We were so poor when we moved that we had no car. We crossed the border on foot with what we could carry and our toy poodle, who walked across on her own four paws. I can't imagine that I had jammed my wedding dress into one of those suitcases, but somehow or other it made it here. It had been sitting in a closet, transferred from apartment, to rental house, to the first home we owned. At one point we had vaguely talked about dry cleaning it, but in the hustled of moves, furnishing our home, renting and buying and moving again, all those ideas got swept away. So there it sat. On our "Someday when we have an extra $50 bucks we don't have anything better to do with" list. At this point, dry cleaners were not confident that they could remove the stains, the best they could guarantee was that it would be clean.
By then I had Pinterest. One day, as I spent moments of boredom swiping through screen after screen of random pins I stumbled across this post on "Loving Life with The Martins." The wheels started turning in my head, and I decided to try it out. After all, six years later my dress was already ruined. It would have been hard to ruin it more than it already was.
I considered and plotted for a while before I actually made my move. Is this a good idea? Maybe.,. It might save my dress and some money. But it might destroy the dress. It's already destroyed anyway, balled up stained in the closet.
I decided to go for it. One day, while The Accountant was at work and I was off, I got out my favorite "Miracle"stain remover - Dawn dish soap, baking soda and peroxide. I mixed up a giant batch because the stains on my dress were huge. My dragon tail had been trod upon, danced on, swirled through dirt and mud and squashed up scorpions all day prior to being crumbled up.
On the smaller stains, I just dabbed the magical mixture on. For bigger stains I added more peroxide so that my potion was more watery and laid the dress in it. Then I let it soak for an hour or so while I went about my "Que haceres." (To-do's)
After I was confident that my stain remover had soaked in, I turned the dress inside out and threw it into my HE front load washer on delicate. I'm not the best at laundry, I just turn the nob to the load style that seems most appropriate and trust my washer to do it's magic.
An hour later came the moment of truth. I stood in front of my washer, staring into the blank eye that gave no clue as to what it held within. Would I be confessing to my husband that I had completely ruined the expensive wedding dress and it was now far from all hope of rescue? Or would this be a Pinterest victory? With a trembling heart, I opened the washer door. All I could see was tulle poofed out everywhere on the inside out dress. I carefully removed the damp dress from the washer. It was in one piece. So far, so good. I didn't see any beads laying around, so that was a good sign. Now, the proof would be in the pudding. What would I find when I turned the dress right side out...? If this were a TV show, I would put "To Be Continued..." and leave you in suspense.
Since it's not a TV show, here's my dress. White, and like brand new. All the stains washed out. I wish I had had the foresight to take a before picture of the grime and stains. The dragon tail is clean, shiny white satin again. And not a bead came loose. My dress was saved. For the price of a tub of homemade stain remover, a little bit of elbow grease, and an hour in the washer. I hung it up to dry, and when The Accountant came home I excitedly showed him my day's "travesura" (mischief).
My dress now hangs proudly in the closet, waiting for a day it might be used again. Maybe some day we'll get around to having the wedding in the US that was promised to my family. We may renew our vows at 10 years, and I think I can still fit into the dress. If not, someday the Sirenita will be big enough to try it on. Either way, at least I now have a reason to keep it, and I'm not storing a bunch of useless satin rags.
I can't guarantee that this will work on any and every dress, but if yours has been sitting around stained for so long that it's already worthless it may not hurt to try it. I would prepare mentally for the worst, and hope for the best!
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