Cross-cultural wedding moment
Today is Thursday. Tomorrow, Friday, I will spend very happily in Florence with the daughters and granddaughters of my dear friend, Miss Joe. Saturday is the wedding.
Whose wedding? It is the wedding of Gianna, who sometimes comments here, and Paolo, my figlioccio or chosen godson. (I’ve been sure that had his mother known me at his birth I would have been chosen, so it’s just a formality that he is not legally my figlioccio.) They are, anyway, loved friends of my Italian life and are finally, after seven years of cliff-hanging suspense, getting married.
I am eager to attend this wedding. When I heard it was in the offing I stupidly said, “Ahhh, I have just the hat!” And were the wedding in the morning I would have just the big, cartwheel hat of my dreams to wear. This wedding, instead, will be at 17:30 with the reception beginning at 19:30 and I don’t have any summer evening hats. When I checked with Tina of “What Are They Wearing to the Opera” fame, she said, “Oh, an evening dress, certainly. But you must wear a hat.”
“A hat?” I cried, “but I can’t if it is in the evening.”
“You must. La Signora Gianna will be very disappointed if you don’t. You promised.”
“I don’t have a hat for a summer evening.”
“You have lots of hats. Just wear one.”
“They’re all for the daytime,” I moped.
“Italians don’t wear hats. They’ll never know the difference.”
But I would. In ensuing conversations I was told three more times that I had to wear a hat. It almost seemed like it wouldn’t matter if I wore anything else.
I could either wear a daytime straw hat, of which I have at least two that are really dressy, and all the British present would think I was a wild Indian from North American shores, or I could make a hat. So, I am making a hat. I am using antique fabric flowers given to me by Miss Joe some years back and some black dotted veiling I bought for the heck of it perhaps ten years ago. I’ve let my hair grow out to almost 2 inches so I can secure this chapeau to something without resorting to eyelash glue. I’ve chosen small and restrained earrings. I’m almost ready to make the hat.
But there are other considerations. Stockings or no stockings? Ten years ago there would have been no question at all. Nowadays it appears that wearing stockings is the grossest fashion error, and yet these are legs that work outside and show it and never get a tan. OK, self-tanner it is. That means exfoliating like crazy, putting it on very carefully and staying naked for at least an hour. I won’t discover the streaks and irregularities until later when it’s too late to change anything.
Eyebrows must be shaped. Facial must be done. Nails must be evened out and slicked up a bit.
Will my dress fit? Who has time to worry about that? All I can do is live entirely on watermelon whenever I have control over the menu until Saturday evening. If it’s tight, who will notice if the hat is crazy enough?
The truth is, there’s hardly anybody at a wedding who looks at anyone other than the bride except the bride… who wants me to wear a hat. Maybe my dinner table mates will see me, but if I stay very silent they may think I am Gianna’s childhood nanny from Brazil or something.
The flowers were all restored very carefully years ago, and they have been used to pin on things since then, but the last few years haven’t been rich in garden parties, so they’ve flopped into the Umbrian humidity and have to be perked up. The veiling waits as crisp as a tutu. I have scissors, thread and somewhere there’s a hair comb I can rob from a different and unacceptable hat to launch this creation onto my locks.
I’ve long had the theory that if you need to call attention from something, you should adorn something else, far away, to grab the eye. I could wrap an ankle, perhaps, in four yards of tiny diamond chain, except the ankle doesn’t hold up to much scrutiny, either, and I don’t have even a meter of diamond chains.
So, hat it is. Sorry to leave you, but I have millinery to do.
15 comments July 26th, 2007
