Addressing the Dress

Alternate Title: How Growing up in Communist Poland is Influencing our Wedding


My friend Rhi called me out on the fact that in my last dress post I simply published some pictures of dresses that I tried on months and months (almost a year) ago without adding anything new. It is true....I totally did it to appease my faithful readers (all 4 of you). I did it because this is a wedding blog, and you are supposed to post pictures of yourself trying on dresses on a wedding blog. I am so ashamed of being pressured by the big, bad, wedding blog world, and trying to fit into the "mould".

There is another reason that I have been hesitant about talking about my dress here, and like the alternate title of my post suggests, it has to do with communist Poland. Huh? What does the political state of a central European country between the years of 1945 to 1989 have to do with my wedding dress? Stay with me, while I explain:

I was born in Poland in 1983. Without giving you a history lesson that would take hours to write (and read), I will just say that Poland in 1983 was not a very happy place. If you have the interest and the time, you can read all about it here. The soviet government did it's best to instill an atmosphere of fear in the country. Basically, especially for the years before my birthday, the government supported a major witch hunt during which being against socialism could have deadly consequences. All it would take was for a neighbour or a (bad) friend to suggest that you were anti-communist and you could be in grave danger. As you can imagine, this caused major paranoia. People were afraid to trust anyone outside of the family (or in it for that matter, as children were encouraged to snitch on their parents).

Umm.....again, what does this have to do with my wedding dress? Well, as my closest friends know, my upbringing in Poland (I lived there until I was 9) has had a huge impact on my life. The fact that my mother's adult life was spent in such an atmosphere has made her very distrustful of, well, people in general. And well, I have inherited very many positive traits from my Mama, but some negative ones, like this one, have managed to peak through. My Mama has me convinced that the second I post a picture of my dress, in fact, the second that I breath a word of my selection to anyone, that person will immediately go out and purchase the exact same dress. But Agni, some of your friends are already married? Doesn't matter....what if they get divorced and remarried, or decide to renew their vows? But what about the cousins that are simply too young to be married? Or the friends that are very unlikely to be getting married by next July? Well, I am sure that those girls would love to wear the same dress that I will be wearing to my wedding. All very logical right?

Nevertheless, for now, I will not be posting pictures of my dress on here. Perhaps my paranoia will wear off eventually, but honestly, I'm 26 years old and don't imagine that I will change now :P


(Just as a side note, I want to say that I poke light of my childhood often, and it's simply my way of dealing with some painful memories, as well as underlying the irony of how different my life is now than it was then. I hope that any of you out there with similar experiences are not offended by my light hearted remarks).