Have you ever held onto something just because it cost a lot and meant a lot, even when it hasn’t left the box in thirty years?
For me, that’s my wedding dress.
It’s been in a box on the top shelf of my closet for longer than my kids have been alive. Before that, it was in the attic of our old house. Before that, a closet in the first little apartment my husband and I shared.
Every time we moved, that box came with us.
I never really decided to keep it. I just never decided to do anything else with it. So it followed me from house to house, taking up a shelf, while I told myself I’d figure it out someday.
For years, I figured someday meant my daughter. I pictured her wanting it, maybe wearing it, keeping it in the family.
Then she got engaged and picked out her own dress (a beautiful one, nothing like mine). And she was kind about it, but I could tell. My dress was never going to be her dress.
That’s when it hit me. The box wasn’t waiting for anything anymore. It was just sitting there, and I was the only one still attached to it.
If you’ve got a dress of your own boxed up somewhere, kept for a day long past and a daughter who has her own plans, you might know exactly the feeling I mean.
So let’s talk about what to do with an old wedding dress, decades later, when the person you saved it for doesn’t want it either.