I was torn. I looked at photos of brides. I had been married before. I knew what the expectations were. A creamy custom Victorian-style corset with touches of French antique gold lace arrived in the mail from a Canadian-made corsetier. A voluminous antique gold tulle skirt with a brown satin sash slumbered in my etsy cart, cream pleated slacks folded in my closet.

I had been slowly collecting photos of short, curly haircuts. I loved my big, Edwardian pompadour, but given that I nearly always wore it up, I had been toying with how to achieve the same look with a short cut. Like many brides, I chose to wait until after the wedding. I wasn’t out even to myself yet. The haircut could wait.

In retrospect, I wonder if anyone noticed how sad I sometimes looked at my own wedding. Some joy withheld. I was happy, but I carried a lot of guilt over rupturing the life my parents had envisioned for me—a heterosexual marriage and children with a person they had adored. They loved my new partner, but my divorce had done damage to everyone somehow, and I felt it. I thought it could be like segmenting a grapefruit. I could slide a knife under the skin and into one segment of my life and remove the sliver of wiggly fruit without disrupting the rest. Instead, I had dropped a bowling ball on the grapefruit, and all its bitter little dupes lay scattered across the floor like shell casings in an action film.

Our wedding day was cold and rainy, and people under the pergola on the Coney Island boardwalk waited nearly an hour in the damp for our car to arrive. The morning had been a shit show. My makeup artist had run late and made us late in turn. My gold skirt blew in the autumn wind, vintage sweater keeping shoulders warm, a crown of curls. My partner wore a gorgeous green plaid suit that he had made in Tribeca. We both looked beautiful, and we were happy to be getting married. After the wedding, most of our family went to a restaurant, and we ate Nathan’s hot dogs on the boardwalk and took photographs before heading to the reception at the Coney Island Sideshow Freak Bar.

My cream pants were folded in my bag, stowed in the mirrored dressing room at the Coney Island Sideshow. My idea had been – pants for the party. I can have the best of both worlds. Having the reception at the Coney Island Freak bar was an invitation for people to briefly inhabit a new life that I was slowly building for myself, and I could tell that the space felt uncomfortable and strange for most everyone there. This place felt like home to me (and still does) ; however, I felt unsettled in ways I couldn’t articulate. As I went back to the dressing room to touch up my makeup, I eyed the pants in my bag, (.) ran my hand over the fabric.

Weddings are full of social rituals. Patterns. Expectations. Goffman says, “It is plain that if an individual is to give and receive what is considered his ritual due in social situations, then he must – whether by intent or in effect – style himself so that others present can immediately know the social and sometimes the personal identity of he who is to be dealt with” (70).

In my mind’s eye, I circulated through the wedding party crowd, watching everyone stretch to this strange environment. I saw their collective rubber band in full tension and felt that they couldn’t go farther, that exchanging my dress for pants was a percentage too much pressure. The skirt is now crammed into a box, studded with gum balls from an obliging tree. In reflecting on this skirt, I forgive myself for not doing what my body was asking for, and I forgive myself for not noticing that my body was even asking. I hear you now, even when you whisper.

(Maybe) A Failure to Compromise: A Wedding Skirt