For Sale: Wedding Dress, Size 20. Never Worn by Sophie Slade

Author:Sophie Slade
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2022-03-15T13:17:02+00:00

Blown Away*

(To be read with a strong southern drawl)

“Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn,” said Bertt. “You could get married in your petticoats for all I care. I’m sure you’ll look lovely for our wedding, no matter what you wear.”

Ruby was shocked at hearing him refer to her undergarments, but the thought of standing at the altar clad all in the white frills and lace of her petticoats was just too amusing a picture.

“I’d do anything to save Lara,” she said. “I have to raise some money somehow to make the loan payment on the plantation. If we can just make this payment, we can keep it going until the cotton is picked and sold to the British merchants. I am sure my wedding dress would raise the few dollars that we still need to make the payment and save Lara from being repossessed by the bank.”

So, the next day she rode into Atlanta and placed a small advertisement in the Atlanta Free Trader “For Sale: Wedding dress. Size 20. Never worn”. She was very sad to part with the beautiful gown she had had imported at huge expense back before the civil war, but everything had changed over the years of that dreadful conflict and “Beggars can’t be choosers,” she told herself. “If we are to rebuild Lara to her former grandeur, or even keep her, we must all just keep on making whatever sacrifices are necessary.” The gown was a beautiful rich, scarlet-coloured silk affair with rows of frills around the bottom, worn over a white petticoat.

“Maybe Bertt is right,” she thought. “Maybe there is something I can do to make the petticoat do instead.” She had heard that since Queen Victoria wore a white wedding dress, they were becoming all the fashion in England.

She sold the dress to the wife of a carpetbagger from the North. They were the only ones with any money these days and they seemed to have plenty. She was able to make the payment on the loan and breathed more easily.

The day after it was sold, she had one of the former house slaves help her transform some old net curtains into an overskirt for her petticoats and fashion a bodice out of an old shawl that had belonged to her mother. By the time they were finished only she and the slave woman knew that she was standing up to be married in her undergarments with barely anything beyond a bit of netting covering her frilly, lacy, white petticoats. She didn’t even pause to wonder if her former house slave took some satisfaction in seeing her “mistress” so reduced that she had to be married in her underwear.

The wedding was certainly not the grand affair it would have been in the pre-war era, but the guests were blown away by the magnificence of the bride all in white.

*With apologies to Margaret Mitchell author of Gone with the Wind, an epic novel about the American South in the Civil War

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.