Cassie scrunched her eyes tight closed as breathed our a shaky breath as she twisted her sparkling engagement ring around and around her finger.
“Aaaaand, open!”
As Cassie gasped at her own reflection in the mirror, tears glistened in her eyes. There was no need to try anything else. This was ‘the one’. The perfect dress. The dress she would wear as she walked down the aisle and finally become Mrs Cassie Walker…
Sarah was set to turn fifty in a few weeks time and she’d worked at Blush Bridal for fifteen years. She smiled warmly at the pretty dark-haired girl around the same age as her daughter, wearing the tea-length white gown. She knew that she told every bride-to-be how beautiful they looked, but she was really being totally honest with this girl when she said she looked just stunning. Cassie giggled and smudged the tears away from her eyes as Sarah titivated the delicate fabric of the skirt. Sarah smoothed the long lace sleeves of the dress, it was as if it’d been made for Cassie; there would be little if any adjustments needed if she ordered this size…
“Ok honey, why don’t we let your grandmother take a look? See what she thinks?”
Cassie nodded excitedly as Sarah moved to slide the curtains,
“Ready, Nanna????”
Cassie had always had a ‘soft spot’ for her Nanna Mary. Her parents had split up when she was four, and although she and her mom had a great relationship, when her mom moved she and her younger brother to Sydney for the career opportunity of a lifetime, Cassie cried her eyes out every day. She was never able to settle the way little Dan did: he was only five when they moved, maybe he’d been too young to really remember his life before Oz? Cassie tried to make friends in her new school class and tried to be brave face when she spoke to her dad on the phone, but she hated it there. She missed her daddy so much it physically hurt. Cassie was a daddy’s girl through and through and she just couldn’t stand not being able to seeing him everyday, to be able to hug him only on holidays… Five months later she was still pining for her father and her mom could see how miserable she was and how she’d failed to adjust. She pleaded daily with her mum to let her go back to Cordonia to live with Danny, ‘I want to go home to Daddy. Mommy you’ve got me and Danny. Daddy must be so lonely… I miss my Daddy so much…” Because she was only seven, her mom was really hesitant about letting her go back, but slowly realised that it was in Cassie’s best interests to be allowed to live with her ex, as heart-breaking as that was to her as a mother…
Nanna Mary was Cassie’s paternal grandmother, and lived five minutes around the corner from Cassie and Danny. Danny was a police officer, which must have made looking after a small girl as a single dad even more difficult. So when Cassie was small and Danny had to work, she would go straight to Nanna Mary’s house after school. They would chat, and bake, and play games. Nanna Mary was really handy; she’d taught Cassie how to knit and sew. Sometimes her nanna would stay over in Cassie’s room when her dad had to work nightshift. The would have pyjama parties and watch movies and eat sweets. The former midwife was kind and affectionate and it was clear that she adored the time she spent with her ‘sugarplum’. As much as Cassie loved her mom, Nanna Mary was the one who was there for her when she grazed her knees, when her dad grounded her for backchat at fifteen, when she got into nursing college, when she failed her driving test… There was no one else in the world that Cassie would have rather had with her when she chose her wedding dress than Nanna Mary.
Mary Kapranos sat in the plush waiting area within the changing rooms at Blush Bridal. She was so grateful that Cassie had asked her to come to choose her dress: she always loved being mom to her two boys, she would never have changed either of them, but as they’d grown into strapping young men, she’d wished that she’d had a daughter too. What was that old saying, ‘your son is yours until he finds a wife, your daughter is your friend all of your life’? Maybe that was partly why Mary’d been so excited when Danny and Christina had little Cassie, but she never imagined that she’d have gotten the opportunity to become so close to the young girl: Cassie felt more like a daughter to Mary than a granddaughter.
Mary was glad she was fit and well enough to see Cassie walk down the aisle; she’d moved from her house around the corner from her son to an assisted living complex a few miles away, around eight years ago after a mini-stroke left her a little wobbly on her feet and less independent than she was before. Mary walked with a stick now, needed grab rails around the house, and wasn’t as fit as she used to be, but hell, she was seventy-five after all!
Mary leaned forward, her hand covering her mouth as she heard the store assistant call out. When she and Cassie had arrived at the store earlier, Cassie had picked out two dresses, similar to something she had seen in a magazine apparently, and Mary had picked one, that Cassie had looked rather nonplussed about. She wondered which one her granddaughter would appear wearing first? The curtains slid open and Cassie stepped forwards, beaming, eyes glistening. Mary gasped as she looked at her,
“Oh Cassie… You look like a little princess!”
Struggling to her feet as Cassie surged forwards to help her, Mary scolded her,
“Stop fussing and let me look at you!”
Cassie rolled her eyes and acquiesced. She stood still as her nanna ran her fingers across the delicate lace shoulders of the gown, the sheer lace across the slash-neck leading to a sweetheart shaped satin bodice covered in the lace. The sleeves were long and the intricate white lace, with a delicate pearly thread causing a shimmer when a hint of sunlight caught it, looked striking against Cassie’s tanned, slim arms. Cassie smiled as Nanna Mary placed her hands on her waist where the delicate bodice cinched in to its narrowest point,
“Do you like it on, Nanna?”
Mary shook her head at Cassie,
“Look at your tiny little waist Cassie, it gives you a lovely hourglass shape. Look, I love how it comes out here… It’s very 50′s…”
Cassie twirled for her nanna to let her see how the sticky-out skirt would look during their first dance. Mary looked at the detail of the skirt, the lace stopped maybe four or five inches from the bottom, scalloped, giving way to a plain satin band. The vintage-styled dress was absolutely stunning.
Cassie smiled happily as she looked at her elderly nanna’s face; it was full of emotion,
“Nanna? I know you thought we were having a full day out dress shopping, but maybe we’ll just go to lunch next…? I don’t see the point in trying on anything else. This is it, this is the dress.”
Mary gawped at Cassie,
“Oh!! Really? You don’t have to take this one because I picked it, what about your fishtailed one, ‘Plum?”
Cassie shrugged her shoulders,
“Nanna, I think you know what I’ll suit better than I do, and this is so perfect on, it’s so much nicer than it is on the hanger. I’m so glad you talked me into trying it.”
Mary laughed as she retorted,
“Yes, I did notice you pulled a face when I showed you this one… It is just to die for Cassie. Are you definitely sure you’re happy with it? You don’t want to try the others, just to be certain?”
Cassie shook her head firmly as she whispered,
“You know what Nanna? Maybe this is just the way I do things. I dated one guy, and I ‘knew’, I tried one dress and I, I just ‘know’…”
Mary wiped a stray tear from her cheek as she watched Cassie twirling around in front of the mirror like a little seven year old again,
“Drake is going to be just speechless when he sees you in this…”
Cassie squeaked excitedly as she thought marrying the love of her life,
“Sarah, can I order this please?”
Sarah had been leaning against the mirror the whole time, watching the magic unfold. The look on the women’s faces was why she did this job. She smiled warmly,
“Of course, I’ll undo the zip for you, you go change and I’ll meet you downstairs.”
Cassie nodded excitedly as Sarah closed the curtain behind her. Mary grabbed her stick and handbag, following Sarah to the door of the dressing room,
“Sarah, can you run the order before she’s finished? I want to pay for Cassie’s dress, and if I know my granddaughter, she’ll only argue with me that it’s too much for me to spend on a widow’s pension, do it before she comes out, please?”
Cassie heard every word that Nanna Mary had tried to whisper, unfortunately her grandmother was starting to get a bit deaf and didn’t realise she wasn’t speaking in the hushed tones she thought she was… She laughed to herself as she stood there in her underwear looking at the gorgeous dress back on the hanger, Nanna Mary was a force to be reckoned with: it was too much for an elderly lady to pay for a wedding dress, but Cassie wouldn’t dare to argue with her.
Plus, it wasn’t all just about the dress… Years down the line, Cassie always remembered that special day they spent shopping for her bridal gown, and whenever she looked back at her wedding photos as a grandmother herself, she remembered fondly the beautiful relationship they’d shared and what an important role that had played all throughout her life.
