What Makes Me Laugh

Stop me if you know the meaning of these words: bolero, dupioni, brocade, sienne, southern formal wedding.

In the process of preparing for my next debut as bridesmaid (bridesmatron?) I’ve learned so many new words. Which shouldn’t be surprising, since I am no fashion maven, and Kayb is an incredibly talented artist who is ultra-fashionably aware. She also has the skills to know how to run a sewing machine (unlike me).

Kayb and I have been close friends since college. We’ve shared apartments and had a lot of adventures, and I don’t get to see her often enough, so I’m excited for the wedding (thought I hope it won’t be an adventure).

Dogsledding with Kayb - New Year's 2000

Halloween 1999 - I failed in my attempt to go as a candlestick (see the red hair) so opted for a kitty

Anyway, as any good bridesmaid knows, you are there to make the bride happy on her big day. So when she explained that I would be wearing an English dress with brocade, here’s where my mind went: floor-length, something lacy? I don’t know. So, I couldn’t have ever come up with a mental picture that came close to the real dress (click here for more photos).

A few years ago my mother showed me her wedding announcement and I was surprised to find out that the trend in wedding announcements at the time was to provide lengthy descriptions of the wedding attire. Fabrics, styles, lengths, and hems were all allotted the same amount of space newspapers normally reserve for car accidents today. Women (and men) must have known a lot more about fabrics then because without a picture, it would have been hard to picture. This is in contrast to my own wedding (see below), where my bridesmaids (Kayb and my sister) were in charge of choosing the dress.

So, back to my bridesmaid dress. I had just gotten over my brocade learning curve when I received this note from Kayb:

“Hi ladies,

It just occurred to me that I have the perfect solution to the bare back issue. A bolero.”

Aha! I thought. A Mexican hat! That ought to do the trick. If it has a wide enough brim it might be able to cast shade to cover the moles on our backs.

I then googled bolero to find out that no, a bolero is not a Mexican hat, but rather a fancy dress jacket. Phew!

The bolero pictured here was my favorite, but alas, it was only Kayb’s idea of a joke! The bolero idea was eventually scrapped in favor of a silk shawl (very classy) but I was happy to learn a new word, especially a fashionable one.

More new words would fly my way when Kayb wrote to apologize about the dresses.

“Hi ladies,

Your dresses should be either at my house or at your place by now.  It appears that I made a mistake in the ordering.  I thought the dresses were silk brocade and so when I got them I was pretty stunned that this wasn’t what it was.  It is a synthetic brocade.  I called the dress shop today and it appears that I had read the options incorrectly.  The dress is either brocade or silk dupioni.  I should have noticed this as dupioni is nubby and could never be a brocade. That said, I am sorry if you thought you were getting a silk brocade.”

Never would have known the difference — nubby or not — so she certainly didn’t have to apologize to me. The full-length version of my dress arrived last week (I’m so tall that someone has to cut it to order), and my only concern is preventing a wardrobe malfunction like Janet Jackson at the Superbowl and letting some bare body part of mine slip out while dancing. That’s when apologies will truly be necessary.

This trip has been filled with good people. Perhaps that is the best part of traveling — meeting people who may be thousands of miles from your geographic world, but very close to you in spirit. 

Enjoying a final refreshment together in the Adelaide Hills

With sadness, we bid adieu to Pam, our Jurlique host, and Jude and Libby, our fellow winners. 

On our last night of Jurlique contest sponsored fun(last Thursday night), Jude and Libby kindly invited us to watch some “footy” on the telly in a Pub and explained the ins and outs of Australian Rules Football to us. I’ll try and explain it to you.  Picture about 30 very fit men under 30 running around a soccer-sized field wearing Where’s Waldo striped clothing while trying to either bump (like a volleyball bump) or kick (like an American football kick) an oversized American football to each other and through a goal post. 

No helmets, no special padding, and a lot of wrestling and grabbing and “marking” and “oh my god, it’s up in the air, who can jump and catch it first” type of play. It really was fun to watch, and not too confusing — unlike cricket, which is deadly boring and lasts literally for days. 

Libby described rugby as trying to get a bunch of bananas through the end of a goal post, and I might pick up on her metaphor to say that rugby players do kind of have gorilla- like bodies. I don’t see that much difference between it and the AFL (Australian Football League), but my eyes haven’t developed a sense for Australian “footy” as they say. 

Anyway, we very much hope that Libby and Jude will make a trip to Montana so that we can try to explain America’s National Football League rules to them and similarly confuse them with the rules of our favorite sport. Cheers!

At Glenelg Beach for a final Jurlique spa treatment