Sunny Side Up Sept.15, 2004 �2004, Kathleen Gibson Once upon a British wedding Good friends flew to Britain for a family wedding. We visited them before they left. Dizzy with anticipation, Cathy showed me her outfit. Burnt orange, with beaded embroidery and a matching jacket. Cream colored shoes, bag and pearls. She held the dress up. Struck a pose. "Do you think I look like the queen? My cousins are very proper, you know. We have to stay in a castle. Two hundred dollars a night!" She groaned, but her sparkling eyes betrayed her. "They sent us a pass to cross the moat!" Back in Canada, she called to report. The dress was fine, she said. "But they wear hats over there. Not to church anymore - that doesn't rate I guess, just places like Ascot and weddings." She'd brought no hat. "So what�?" I started. "My cousin had none either, but her husband thought she should so we visited a hat shop in York. They're rather expensive, you know - hundreds of pounds. And a brim is a brim is a brim, but some of those brims a bird could build a nest on, and when do you wear it again? One of the cousins hired one for forty pounds - that's a hundred and twenty-five dollars!" She inhaled, dived in again. "We bought combs instead. They're the newest thing over there; just the bravest wear them and they only cost eight or ten pounds. They have pearls and things and feathers that stand straight up like Hiawatha's - good quality feathers, you know, not pigeon feathers. You stick them in with bobby pins and pouf your hair up around them. I bought a cream one; she bought a purple one and her husband nearly dropped his teeth when we came home - he expected hats. "Oh!" she gasped, "I danced with the vicar! A Scottish dance - 'Strip the Willow,' I think. John wouldn't dance on account of his two left feet. My feet were fine, but my brain couldn't follow and our circle was sort of square... "The bride's mother wore black and cream, poor woman, her skirt was wool, I think, and it was so hot, and her hat was huge, kind of shaped like an orbit, and it dipped over one eye. Quite saucy, it looked; she's very black-headed. Her shoes were pointy, pointy, very pointy (Britain is always a year ahead of us in fashion, you know) but she kicked them off (and her hat too, everybody did) and flew around the room in bare feet all night, sweating up a storm. "I kept my 'hat' on the whole time; it was so frivolous and light the feathers bounced and I felt just like Hiawatha's sister and some women said they wished they'd had the nerve�." I took a breath. Cathy raced on. "I think I look pretty good in a hat. You know, the vicar's wife had no hat at all�..." Good thing, I say. No decent vicar's wife I know would even attempt to kick her hat off. Amen. You can respond to this column at [email protected] |
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