Wedding Dresses: Articles of Interest #12

Avery Trufelman:
“Before you came into the world of radio, what were you doing?”

Vivian Le:
“I was working on wacky daytime talk shows, late-night talk shows, YouTube talk shows. Bunch of just random things.”

Avery Trufelman:
My colleague at 99% Invisible, Vivian Le.

Vivian Le:
“On the 2013 reboot of ‘The Arsenio Hall Show,’ I was a production assistant and my current fiance was also production assistant. And we’ve been together for five years.”

Avery Trufelman:
So last year, Vivian had to plan her wedding, which was kind of like her old job as a production assistant. Except that in this production, she’s the star. And, the wardrobe department.

Vivian Le:
“I’ve been looking at wedding dresses since me and Cody got together.”

Avery Trufelman:
“Five years ago?”

Vivian Le:
“Yeah. I’ve always been thinking about what kind of dress do I want? So I think that’s probably why it’s so hard for me to decide now, because it’s something that I’ve been thinking about for so long. It’s a really big decision. So I’m not really looking forward to picking out the dress, because it seems so stressful.”

Avery Trufelman:
I mean, on the surface it’s just a dress, a dress that is white.

Avery Trufelman:
“But you like buying clothes normally, no?”

Vivian Le:
“I like… Oh, this is really bad. I am a… I’m a bargain shopper. I am a Maxxinista.”

Avery Trufelman:
“Like TJ Maxx? Why is that bad?”

Vivian Le:
“Because I buy a lot of clothes that you would not think highly of after doing ‘Articles of Interest,’ that are very cheap. I could buy a ton of them, and like, “Oh whatever. It’s just $5 for the shirt.” So I’m that kind of shopper. I think of what kind of value can I get for this, and I feel like a wedding dress is never equated with value. Most people I think spend more than a thousand dollars on their wedding dress. And that sounds insane to me. I would rather not spend more than $800 on a wedding dress. $800 to me is a lot, but it feels-”

Avery Trufelman:
“That is a lot.”

Vivian Le:
“It’s a lot of money.”

Avery Trufelman:
“So when are you going wedding dress shopping?”

Vivian Le:
“Oh, I’m putting it off so much. And I don’t want to do it. And it has nothing to do with me not wanting to get married, it’s that it’s so much pressure to spend so much money on this one item of clothing that I know I’m only going to use once.”

[OPENING SONG]

Avery Trufelman:
Articles of Interest, a show about what we wear. Season 2.

[PEOPLE DON’T REALIZE IT’S FANTASY.]

[THERE’S ALWAYS THIS THING THAT YOU HAVE TO WORK EXTRA HARD TO GET.]

[HMM, THAT’S SO GOOD.]

[NO ONE DRESSES LIKE A KING ANYMORE.]

[HOW DO YOU MAKE MONEY? THAT’S HOW I MAKE MONEY, LOVE.]

[THERE ARE LOTS OF THINGS THAT WE TAKE FOR GRANTED THAT WOULD ONCE HAVE BEEN CONSIDERED LUXURIES.]

Avery Trufelman:
A wedding should be pretty simple and straightforward. It’s just about you and the person you’re marrying and the ones you love, and it should just be that. At least, this is Vivian’s fantasy.

Vivian Le:
“I don’t want to spend so much time getting ready for my wedding. I just want it to be a nice dinner with my friends and family. We want like a five-minute ceremony, so people don’t have to sit through “reasons why we love each other” cause, whatever.”

Benjamin Karney:
You can understand why maybe lots of couples would at least be tempted to escape from that burden.

Avery Trufelman:
Dr. Benjamin Karney is a professor of social psychology at UCLA, and the co-director of “Their Marriage Lab.” He has talked to a lot of couples.

Benjamin Karney:
Almost every couple I’ve ever talked to, has said in planning their wedding, “We strongly consider chucking it all and eloping. Most couples don’t do it – most couples have their wedding – and some couples do, and they elope. That has some benefits. You save the expense. You save the money and you can spend it on yourselves. You don’t have to worry about your families interacting. I would say it also has some costs. Because what you don’t get, is the public display of couplehood.

Avery Trufelman:
And that is what a public wedding is all about. Letting other people invest in your partnership.

Benjamin Karney:
A wedding does something to the couple. It also does something to the guests. If I attend a wedding, I was there at the institutional beginning of your relationship, and that means I’m kind of responsible for you.

Avery Trufelman:
That’s a heavy thing. It’s not just a party. And that pressure quickly changed all of Vivian’s wedding plans, which had started simply enough.

Vivian Le:
“So I’m getting married in Italy, in the summer.”

Avery Trufelman:
This was last summer, by the way. And it was just supposed to be a small destination wedding, family only. But two Americans can’t legally get married in another country. So Vivian decided on a courthouse wedding in LA and invited her friends, but then her fiance’s family on the East Coast got wind of that-

Vivian Le:
“Cody’s family was like, ‘Okay. Well, we’ll throw you a party.’ And we’re like, ‘Okay. Great. Yeah.’ So we checked back in with them. There’s 150 people coming. And they rented out this beautiful hall with a view of Manhattan in the background. So now we’re having three weddings. Yes.”

Avery Trufelman:
Three different weddings, with three completely different locations. And I know a few couples who have done this, who’ve had a handful of ceremonies to accommodate everyone they love. And of course, this affects the dress. Because you will wear different outfits to a courthouse or a church or a beach or Disney World. It depends on the weather. It depends on how big the space is, or how formal or informal it is. And this dizzying array of options is a by-product of a wealthy post-industrial civilization. For the lion’s share of history. Brides just got married in whatever they had that was nice, and clean. They might have one fancy dress for their wedding, and then they might wear that same dress again, for all the other weddings they attended as a guest. And this dress often wasn’t white.

Heidi Rabben:
A very deep purple velvet, and it’s very richly embellished with gold metal thread embroidery.

Avery Trufelman:
Curator Heidi Rabben showed me a purple velvet caftan, covered in gold embroidery, depicting flowers and trees. It was a wedding dress from the 19th century Ottoman Empire. This garment is called a Bindalli.

Heidi Rabben:
And this is a garment that was very typical for a Turkish, an Ottoman Turkish Jewish woman. It was considered part of her dowry. So when she would get married, this was a very valuable piece of clothing that she wore at the wedding, but also at the ceremonies leading up to the wedding, and then also for any very important parts of her life thereafter.

Avery Trufelman:
Imagine. You’d be getting married in your Bindalli, surrounded by all your friends in their Bindallis that they were married in. It must have been quite powerful. It would be like being accepted into a coven, or a robing ceremony for an academic or a judge.

Heidi Rabben:
Yeah, it’s about welcoming someone into a community.

Avery Trufelman:
Heidi is the senior curator at the Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco. Last year, they hosted a show called “Veiled Meanings,” which displayed some wedding dresses from across the Jewish diaspora, which is to say from across the world.

Heidi Rabben:
Primarily from the Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia.

Avery Trufelman:
And a lot of these wedding clothes from this huge cross-section of the globe were worn multiple times, or at least twice.

Heidi Rabben:
This garment was actually a burial shroud.

Avery Trufelman:
Heidi showed me this caftan-like tunic made of linen.

Heidi Rabben:
And the burial shroud would be worn during the wedding, for both men and women. And it was a way of reminding people at this very important moment in their lives of their mortality.

Avery Trufelman:
So on the two most significant days of your adult existence, you’d be wearing the same thing.

Heidi Rabben:
This was common in several different parts of the world, and in the Jewish faith in particular.

Avery Trufelman:
Of course now, each wedding dress is a decidedly one-time thing. And it’s not a community dress. The bride wears white and usually, she’s the only one wearing white. It is all about her one dress on this one day. And sure enough, the exhibit at the Contemporary Jewish Museum, like a lot of fashion runway shows and like this podcast series, ends with a big white wedding dress as a finale.

Heidi Rabben:
To reflect on this trend of wedding dresses being white.

Avery Trufelman:
Note how Heidi called it a ‘trend.’ Yes, white has been a marker of maidenhood and virginity for centuries, but the white wedding dress trend began when Queen Victoria married Prince Albert in 1840. She wore white, and 14 years later in 1854, Queen Victoria and Prince Albert staged a reenactment of their wedding so they could be photographed. Images of Queen Victoria’s white dress circulated throughout the colonies in a way few images could.

Heidi Rabben:
Her empire extended very long and very wide. And so the trend of wedding dresses beginning to be white, starting with her, really pervaded all over the world, following that moment.

Avery Trufelman:
It’s a simple origin story. And simultaneously, a massive and complicated one. Through imperialism, a look became a trend and became a tradition.

Vivian Le:
“Like it has to be white, or it doesn’t have to be white.”

Avery Trufelman:
Vivian didn’t particularly care about the color of her dress.

Vivian Le:
“I’m okay with it not being white. But I feel like it’s going to raise some eyebrows from my older generations, my in-laws. I think when they see their kids getting married, they want to see the white gown. And they want to share that moment.”

Avery Trufelman:
Because as much as people will say, it’s the bride’s day, the day also belongs to everyone in the bride’s life. And there’s only one dress. It has to represent tradition, but also be something unique and totally you.

Elizabeth Dye:
I always say, what do you like in your closet now?

Avery Trufelman:
Elizabeth Dye is a wedding dress designer. She says most of her clients start out thinking they have no idea what they want in a wedding dress. But she says they can just look at what they already wear.

Elizabeth Dye:
What shape is it? What does it feel like? Just start with your relationship with clothing now. This is not a NASA spacesuit. This is not a highly technical item of apparel. You know how to do this. You may think you don’t, but you know how. You have bought clothes. You’ve dressed yourself for years.

Avery Trufelman:
“But how can that translate to a wedding dress? How how could I be wearing-”

Elizabeth Dye:
“Avery, you’re wearing a v-neck. This top looks like it might be vintage. Is it?”

Avery Trufelman:
“Yes.”

Elizabeth Dye:
“Okay. So think about that. Is that a neckline that you like? Do you like a loud print? Do you like the ’60s? How do you like to feel? Do you like to wear a sleeve? Do you feel more comfortable in a sleeve? All of those things. I mean, clothing boils down to silhouette, textile, details. That’s pretty much it. So shape, fabric, bits and pieces. So just think about what you gravitate towards in terms of shape, fabric, and bits and pieces.”

Avery Trufelman:
So sure. In some ways a wedding dress can be like other clothes you already have. But technically speaking, a wedding dress is like nothing else we have in our closets. I know I’ve never had anything tailored to my body.

Elizabeth Dye:
The vast majority of us now, wear clothes with Lycra in them and knits. And so things don’t have to fit, they just have to stretch. So most of us are just not accustomed to wearing something that fits close to the body, that is touching us. And that doesn’t stretch.

Avery Trufelman:
A wedding dress is a throwback to how clothing used to feel.

Elizabeth Dye:
It really brings up all of the traditional draping techniques like the internal corset. And the fundamentals of Couture design, come into play in wedding dresses in a way that they don’t with most other clothing.

Avery Trufelman:
In a lot of ways, the typical wedding is a trip back to the times of Queen Victoria. Overtly if you’re wearing white. But also in the very process of learning about this antiquated kind of clothing.

Rebecca Mead:
I mean, having something called a gown, rather than a dress… It’s your one and only gown, unless you get married again and then you get another gown. Most of us are not gown-wearing very often.

Avery Trufelman:
As Rebecca Mead wrote in her book, “One Perfect Day,” the process of wedding planning has become an Eliza Doolittle-like education.

Rebecca Mead:
I went to these kind of wedding planning seminars where you would have experts instructing the brides to be on, make sure you practice walking backwards in your dress, because if you don’t, you’re going to trip over the train and fall over and break your neck. And I mean, these are literally the things that were taught to Victorian maidens in finishing schools before they found their husbands.

Avery Trufelman:
And this sort of education goes beyond the dress. Into the different kinds of cutlery and flower arrangements and varieties of buttercream and fondant, learning correct posture and how to walk.

Rebecca Mead:
There’s something incredibly retro, really. Isn’t there?

Avery Trufelman:
And that’s the whole point. We look back in time for reassurance, to understand that hundreds of thousands of people before us did it just this way. Tradition is like a good luck charm.

Rebecca Mead:
It’s a huge thing to get married. I mean, it’s very understandable that we want our personal choices to feel like they have some cultural value that extends beyond us.

Avery Trufelman:
And the challenge of a wedding – from the dress to the menu, everything – is about finding that balance between tradition and individuality. So not only are you navigating your desires with the desires of everyone around you, you are also considering the desires of everyone who came before you.

Rebecca Mead:
We want to be individual, at the same time we don’t want to be out there on our own.

Avery Trufelman:
And this balancing act, Rebecca Mead says, has its own significance. Only a few generations ago, getting married was a massive arguably traumatic life change. In one day, you would go from being a kid living in your parents’ house, to becoming a spouse of someone who you maybe didn’t know that well. And now when a lot of couples already live together, and know all there is to know about each other, we replicate that change, that major feeling of transition, in the act of planning the wedding.

Rebecca Mead:
The wedding process substitutes for the shock that once you would have had, going from being a single person to being a married person. And I think in a way, it becomes a kind of useful thing to go through because you feel like there is something different happening to you.

Avery Trufelman:
You have gone through the process of planning this thing. You’ve learned about floral arrangements and venue rentals. You’ve gone through low-stakes simulations of trials and tribulations. And in this way, the ordeal of finding a wedding gown is particularly symbolic.

Rebecca Mead:
There’s so much hope and promise that’s caught up in the buying of the dress. The gown has a totemic quality, doesn’t it? You fall in love with the dress as a way of falling in love with your spouse or replicating that experience of falling in love. And this is the one. You’ve found the one, just like you found the one to marry.

Avery Trufelman:
I was so ready to follow my colleague, Vivian, to a local dress salon, to watch that process unfold. Where she would try on gown after gown, dancing and shimmying in every look, while I sat on the couch, giving my thumbs up or thumbs down. Until Vivian comes out of the dressing room with an ethereal glow on her face. And everything seems to slow down. We don’t have to say a word. We just know she’s found the right one. The sales attendance clasp their hands over their mouths, and suddenly I’m crying, and Vivian is crying. We’re all crying. And in this moment, we all truly understand the gravity of what Vivian is about to do. And we burst out in applause. But I don’t have this moment on tape. It didn’t happen.

Vivian Le:
“No. Because I bought a dress. Literally… probably two days after we talked.”

Avery Trufelman:
“Inspired by our interview?”

Vivian Le:
“Um, a little-”

Avery Trufelman:
“It’s okay.”

Vivian Le:
“No. A little bit. I think after we talked, I kind of wanted to get it done. So I went online. I just googled around.”

Avery Trufelman:
Vivian showed me a picture of a long, white, off the shoulder dress. Very sleek. No lace or embellishment at all.

Vivian Le:
“It’s not poofy at all. It’s just kind of a sleek material.”

Avery Trufelman:
“How much was your dress? If I can ask.”

Vivian Le:
“Yeah. No, you can totally. I’ll tell you. It was $100.”

Avery Trufelman:
“No!”

Vivian Le:
“Yeah.”

Avery Trufelman:
“What?!”

Vivian Le:
“It was $100.”

Avery Trufelman:
“Is it nice?”

Vivian Le:
“It’s nice. It’s not see-through. It might catch on fire in the sunlight. I haven’t tried it on in sunlight yet, but I like it.”

Avery Trufelman:
And in a weird way, Viv is following Elizabeth’s advice. She picked out a wedding dress the same way she picks out the other clothes in her wardrobe, she found a bargain.

Vivian Le:
“The Maxxinista in me wins again.”

Avery Trufelman:
And it’s very much in Vivian’s minimal sleek style, but it’s also clearly a wedding dress. It’s white and it’s not something Viv could just wear a second time, without significant alterations.

Vivian Le:
“I think this is definitely the kind of cut and fit that if I wanted to dye it, and wear it to something else, I totally could do that.”

Avery Trufelman:
It turns out this is a common fantasy about wedding dresses.

Elizabeth Dye:
I get asked quite often, could I just shorten this dress later if I want to wear it again? Or could I dye it?

Avery Trufelman:
Elizabeth Dye, the wedding dress designer.

Elizabeth Dye:
My last name is Dye. So if you want to dye a wedding dress, and you google “dye wedding dress,” I come right up.

Avery Trufelman:
And the answer to the question of, “should you dye your wedding dress?” is no.

Elizabeth Dye:
Don’t dye your wedding. The chances of you ruining it are 95%.

Avery Trufelman:
Even if you send it out to get it dyed professionally, it’s tough. Because most garments are made of more than one textile, and they all take dyes differently. And often it comes out unevenly. Dye can also shrink garments. Just generally, it’s a rough thing to put your dress through.

Vivian Le:
“I’m glad you told me that now, before I threw it in a bucket with some food color.”

Avery Trufelman:
“Oh yeah. No.”

Vivian Le:
“I have done that before, with shorts. It was a pair of jorts, that I turned into green jorts for Anime Expo because I was cosplaying”

Avery Trufelman:
“Who are you?”

Vivian Le:
“I’ve got a lot of skeletons in my closet.”

Avery Trufelman:
So if you can’t dye and rewear your dress, lots of brides are opting to do something unprecedented in the long history of wedding dresses. They will take this gown that they spent countless hours fretting over, and toss it.

Elizabeth Dye:
So I’ve been making wedding dresses for a little over 15 years, which is crazy. It’s literally a new generation getting married now. There’s now sort of a new generation who grew up with “fast fashion” and just a really different relationship with clothes. There’s much more of a, “I want one this to look killer on Instagram, and then I’ll peace out.”

Avery Trufelman:
There’s actually a whole trend of theatrically destroying the dress after the wedding. Like the bride will jump in the ocean in the dress, or get it covered in sand, or set it on fire — in order to take pictures of it.

Elizabeth Dye:
“Trash the dress.”

Avery Trufelman:
“Is that what the trend is called?”

Elizabeth Dye:
“Yes. I would say that the trash-the-dress thing is in keeping with sort of this new idea of “pure moment,” and then if you want to extend the moment, extend the moment by just destroying the thing, and making sure to get incredible photos of that, and then you’re done.”

Avery Trufelman:
There’s something kind of poetic about finding beauty in this destruction. “Trash-the-dress” is kind of an anti-ceremony in some ways. But I don’t know. Maybe instead of submerging it in an ocean or setting it on fire or attempting to dye it green, maybe the dress itself can function like a photograph. Maybe it’s worth keeping a wedding dress in your closet to remind you of that one day that you worked so hard for.

Allison Chernow:
“I guess I could give it away, but it had some sentimental value to me.”

Avery Trufelman:
Allison Chernow has held onto her wedding dress for 30 years.

Allison Chernow:
“I don’t have much else left over from the wedding, other than the album and husband.”

Avery Trufelman:
Alison is my mom. She has the album full of photos, the videos, the wedding ring. And what’s more, me and my sister. There’s a lot of evidence that she got married to my dad. But to her, the dress is different somehow.

Allison Chernow:
“So I can look at this… Even looking at the photos, I sort of start thinking about the friends or the people who’ve died since my wedding, things like that. But this is the only object that really makes me think about the actual event and the ceremony. I can then remember how I felt in the dress, and how I felt that day. And I did feel really beautiful. I felt like that was my day. And people stood up when I walked down the aisle in that dress, and you felt very special. It was a moment.”

Avery Trufelman:
I’m kind of in awe of people who decide to get married. Becoming legally bound to someone else seems so recklessly optimistic, it’s almost rebellious. And not just because there’s a 40% chance it won’t work out. Through the bubonic plague and the Great Depression and the coronavirus, people have found ways to get married, to have whatever version of a wedding they can. For richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health, weddings are easy to lampoon. I don’t need to go through the reasons why. But at the heart of this cliche, is something vulnerable. And at the heart of all this luxury is something necessary. It’s about having something to reach for, having something to feel excited about.

Vivian Le:
“It actually is a special day. I was kind of avoiding coming to terms with that it’s a special day, that people want to be happy for you. That wedding dress became an afterthought, after having experienced being around family and getting to live these three very distinct weddings.”

Avery Trufelman:
Vivian had her weddings. The Italian get-away with a sleek off-the-shoulder dress.

Vivian Le:
“And it was perfect.”

Avery Trufelman:
The courthouse in Los Angeles.

Vivian Le:
“I got a 40-buck dress. So, that was fine.”

Avery Trufelman:
And the big family gathering in New York.

Vivian Le:
“Thin-strapped, floor-length, lacy. And I’ve seen a million girls with the same exact wedding dress, and it didn’t bother me.”

Avery Trufelman:
And then suddenly all that energy and anxiety that went into the dresses went away. It was like Cinderella’s carriage turning back into a pumpkin. The dresses are just dresses.

Vivian Le:
“I could let it go, I feel like.”

Avery Trufelman:
“Yeah?”

Vivian Le:
“Yeah. I think so. I don’t know. I think we keep too much stuff. I don’t want to end up hoarding all these clothes.”

Avery Trufelman:
“Really? You’d be okay with not having any?”

Vivian Le:
“I haven’t felt the need to take out the wedding dresses, and look at them and feel them again, or put them on again.”

Avery Trufelman:
“Also, it just happened.”

Vivian Le:
“It did just happen. It could change. 10 years from now, I might want to have one.”

Avery Trufelman:
Or even 30 years from now.

Allison Chernow:
“I don’t even know if it would fit. So funny to try on.”

Avery Trufelman:
“Do you want to try it on?”

Allison Chernow:
“Yeah. I’ll try it on.”

Avery Trufelman:
“Yeah.”

Avery Trufelman:
Because clothes are records of the bodies we’ve lived in. We are like snakes who shed our skins and acquire new ones as we age.

Allison Chernow:
“Oh, I remember this. The waist is so narrow.”

Avery Trufelman:
But sometimes it’s nice, in the churn of our clothes, to let something last.

Allison Chernow:
“I can’t get into it.”

Avery Trufelman:
Because the way you change and grow might be unexpected.

Avery Trufelman:
“It’s because your shoulders are broad.”

Allison Chernow:
“My shoulders got big.”

Avery Trufelman:
But in this case…

Avery Trufelman:
“Can I try it on?”

Allison Chernow:
“Yeah. Try.”

Avery Trufelman:
When I tried on my mom’s wedding dress…

Avery Trufelman:
“I don’t think it’ll button.”

Avery Trufelman:
And couldn’t get it off.

Avery Trufelman:
“I shouldn’t have done this. I’m sorry.”

Avery Trufelman:
I had to rip the dress she’d been saving for three decades.

Allison Chernow:
“Girl, just go for it. Okay?”

Avery Trufelman:
But the bright side of this was that with a newly ripped open seam-

Avery Trufelman:
“You should try it again.”

Avery Trufelman:
My mom’s wedding dress could actually fit her again.

Avery Trufelman:
“Oh, hey!”

Allison Chernow:
“Ah-ha! See? I’m glad I kept it.”

Avery Trufelman:
She hadn’t worn it in years. And there, with her two grown-up daughters watching-

Avery Trufelman:
“Wait, where’s dad? Should I go get dad?”

Avery Trufelman:
In a dress that wasn’t quite her size or her style anymore, she walked through her home.

Avery Trufelman:
“Check it out.”

Avery Trufelman:
And all eyes were on her.

Lloyd Trufelman:
“Look how gorgeous you are.”

Avery Trufelman:
Again.

Lloyd Trufelman:
“Unbelievable.”

[CLOSING SONG]
‘Portrait’ by Sasami Ashworth
A pocket, a piece of paper.
Words from yesterday.
There’s a portrait, painted on the things we love.

[CLOSING SONG]
‘Portrait’ by Sasami Ashworth
A pocket, a piece of paper.
Words from yesterday.
There’s a portrait, painted on the things we love.

Avery Trufelman:
Articles of Interest was written and performed by Avery Trufelman. Edited by Chris Berube with additional edits by Emmett FitzGerald and Joe Rosenberg. Scored by Rhae Royal and Sean Real with additional music by Jason Jia. Fact-checked by Tom Colligan with additional fact-checking by Graham Hacia. Mix and tech production by Sharif Youssef, with additional mixing by Katherine Rae Mondo. Our opening and closing songs are by the mighty Sasami. Her self-titled album is so beautiful and she has a new single out called “Mess.” Check her out.

Insights, support, and edits from the whole 99pi team, including Vivian Le, Sean Real, Abby Madan, Kurt Kohlstedt, Delaney Hall, and Katie Mingle.

And Roman Mars is the best man of this whole series.

[CLOSING SONG CONTINUED]
There’s a portrait, painted on the things we love.

  1. Brandon McCaffery

    THANK YOU FOR EVERYTHING, AVERY!!! You have been truly inspiring, thought provoking, and pure joy to listen to!!!

    *hugs*

    Best wishes!!! Love ya!!!

  2. I’ve been listening to 99pi for years. Your voice has been a part of my life every week.
    Younger left a song impression.
    Good luck with your next move. I hope we’ll get to hear more of you.

  3. Quinn

    “Two Americans can’t legally get married in another country.” Uh-oh. My American wife and I were married just under thirty years ago, and nobody has ever questioned the legality of it. Our Danish marriage certificate is in Danish, German, and English. I suppose we’re common law by now though, right?

  4. Mims

    Ah Avery! You will be missed! I thoroughly enjoyed all your pieces and wish you the best of luck going forward. Fashioning a career path is never easy and taking the road less travelled rather than sticking with the comfortable option is challenging and courageous. May you be rewarded in ways both tangible and intangible.

    P.S. I sewed my wedding dress for under $100. The only way I could afford a custom gown with real dupioni silk. I just gave it away after 20 years hanging in the closest without looking at it once. Moving 800 miles will make a person jettison all sorts of things. I still have the man, and a lovely son. : )

  5. Alex Cartes

    Aw Avery, hope u read all these positive comments, wish u the best luck from the cold winter in Chile.

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