As a teen, I had a sickly-sweet love of shopping. I could hardly ever convince my mum to drive me to the mall, and when I got there, I carried a lot of feelings with me. In one pocket was a great desperate, anxious excitement, alive and fluttering, and in the other curled the faint furry certainty of disappointment.

As I flipped methodically through the racks of the chain shops, I inspected each and every item with a hopeful and critical eye. In a flash of imagination I dressed myself in each garment. I transformed my very self, my social standing, and my possible futures with that tight black faux-leather crop top with the laces up the front, the floral flutter-sleeve dress in slippery viscose, the bellbottom jeans, and those hot red short shorts with white beading up the sides.

If I could just have the right clothes, things would happen to me beyond my wildest dreams; I would be different, life would be different.

Of course, the one or two items I could afford to add to my uniform of jeans and Ts could never quite bring about the desired transformation. It was a teenage fantasy, complete with teenage disillusion.

But you know it’s really sticky, that idea that in the right dress, life would be blessed. Especially when it comes to white dresses.

The things that we angst over for ages aren’t the things that really matter. What matters is not whether you were utterly transformed from regular you into a Cinderella princess for the length of a single day in May, but the salty and sweet shit you and your lover put each other through every day before, and every day after. But the dress, the dress becomes a vortex of focus. As though it were the talisman for a whole life, as though it could put a hex upon the future and guarantee your animated happily-ever-after.

But perhaps those things we angst over for ages are symbols for the things that really matter, the things we desperately desire and need to be safe and contented. We wanna buy a lifetime of social and financial and emotional security, a partnership we can rely upon, and for that, the modest price of two grand seems like a steal of a deal. All we are hoping for is the impossible, so it’s natural it should be expensive.

Plus, the lace makes us feel special, the extravagant costume makes us into someone a little bit more than we are, for that brief frenetic day.