"Make Your Own?"

When David proposed, Megan agreed without hesitation. At 36 and after an abusive relationship and long divorce from her first narcissistic husband, she was finally with a partner who loved her for who she was and shared many of her passions. David was 38, divorced, and sharing custody of a 12-year-old daughter with his ex. Megan was learning how to be a good stepmom; not an easy job with a preteen, especially when you have no kids of your own. But Megan was giving it her best.

He proposed in Blue Ridge Mountains when they got to the highest point of their hike. It was a dream vacation for them, to do a short leg of the Appalachian trail from Georgia through North Carolina. Megan knew the proposal was coming because they'd talked about getting married. But it was still very romantic and funny.

David dropped on one knee and cited his own proposal verses, dramatically waving a flame Azalia flower he'd picked on the way and a tasteful oval diamond ring attached to it. Megan happily said yes, he got up, put the ring and her finger and immediately asked, "So, when do you want to have our wedding?"

"Nine months to a year," she said without hesitation again.

"Why the three-month bracket?" David asked, slightly amused.

"That's how long it takes to get the dress done, on average."

"Really? I thought it was just a matter of going to a bridal shop and selecting a dress that they'd perfectly fit for you."

"Oh, babe, that's what I've done the first time," she said and paused. David knew everything about Megan's previous marriage, so he just gave her a big bear hug. She looked up into his eyes and said, "I think I want to make my own dress."

"That'd be cool," he said, kissing her on the forehead. "But does it really take up to a year?"

"You know me, I'm a perfectionist," she chuckled. "Besides, there are so many other planning details for a wedding!"

Megan didn't want David to know she would KNIT her wedding dress. He knew she was into all sorts of crafts - knitting, crocheting, sewing. It was something she'd leaned into as a bad-marriage-and-divorce coping mechanism years before. And she mastered it.

She had an entire crafts room in their rental apartment (they'd been living together for two years now), with all sorts of equipment and tools, including two sewing machines, a steamer, a large drafting table for pattern plotting and a proper dress form. It was her Zen room and David knew not to enter it uninvited or without knocking. This was a mutual rule as he had his own den for work and gaming. As mature business professionals they could afford the space and toys they wanted to work and play with.

And still, she didn't want David to know she'd decided to knit the dress. She already broke one superstition - not to make your own wedding dress - and didn't want to commit the cardinal sin of him seeing the dress before the wedding. Also, she knew it would take time. Even though she was a speed knitter who could finish a sweater in a week, she knew it would take her months because she wanted to knit an elaborate lace dress with the finest wool-and-silk yarn she'd found on the internet. It took the women on Pinterest who'd done a similar dress six to eight months to finish it.

When they came back home from the Appalachia at the end of July, David and Megan set the wedding date for July 10 next year. She had over eleven months and she enlisted the help of her entire extended family for the other planning details. Unloading the venue and many arrangements on her sister, brother, and sister-in-law was a huge relief.

When Megan told people she wanted to make her own dress, she heard everything the Pinterest women had warned everyone about:

"It's bad luck to make your own dress! That marriage won't last long!"

"It'll make you look like a grandma from the Depression Era!"

"Why wouldn't you just buy the dress? The amount of time, effort and materials you are going to use making it would cost about the same!"

"Drop this newagey nonsense, you don't have to do everything with your own hands!"

"You are so enthusiastic about it now but by the time you are done you will be so tired you'd hate the dress. I'd sewn my own dress and felt that way, and you are going to knit it?!?"

She'd heard it all and more. Dad said, mindfully and painfully careful not to insult her, "If it's a matter of money, sweetheart, I'd happily pay for it. I have a feeling this one will not go to the donation bin."

Magan smiled, grateful, and said, "Thanks, dad. It's not the matter of money. I just want to make it. It will be truly the dress of my dream."

Megan's mother supported her all the way. As an accomplished seamstress herself, she helped Megan design and put together a muslin undergarment for her future lacy dress, and that was the only part of the process David got a glimpse of, accidentally. Megan did most of the knitting when he was at work, away on his business and leisure trips with his guy friends, or spending time with his daughter.

She started out in September with the skirt because she knew it would be the easiest and most enjoyable part of her knitting project. Even though it was large (she had to knit the skirt in six sections) it was the easiest: once you get into a pattern, your fingers do the work almost on autopilot. It was actually fun to start at the bottom and decrease it to the waist line, seeing the definite end and shape of it. She didn't screw up even once and was done at the end of November. When David was away on a business trip for a week, she blocked the skirt out on the dress form, furnished with the crude bell-shaped contraption she made out of furniture padding. And then she put it behind a fitting screen so that no one could see it, even when they accidentally entered the room.

The bodice gave her the most trouble. At first, she made it too small and had to unravel and start over. She didn't use the same yarn on the second attempt as she felt it lost its luster. On the second attempt, she screwed the pattern a couple of times on the back and fixing the mistakes took more time than re-knitting it would have. The bodice seemed just uncooperative as on the second attempt it turned out a little too large. But Megan was stubborn and decided to take care of it in the blocking process. When she was done at the end of February, she sighed with relief. Just two sleeves and then putting it all together, the latter she didn't look forward to at all.

Before starting on the sleeves, she decided to stitch together the skirt and bodice so that she could do the first proper fitting. She asked her mom to help with the fitting and hemming and they spent about four hours doing that, giggling like little girls. Extra bonding experience was a welcome side effect and they were both extremely pleased with the way the dress was turning out. It fit well on the undergarment and the fact that the bodice was a little too large actually helped as they decided it didn't need its own zipper or buttons and could be just laid over the undergarment's one.

Mom joked that it didn't really need the sleeves as it would be probably too warm in July and it already looked beautiful. But Megan thought it would look underdone, undefined and non-structured without the sleeves, so she started to work on them right away.

She didn't want the sleeves to have seams like in the pattern because they made them look forced, tense, and non-stretchy, so she used the circular needles. That presented an additional challenge on the lacy pattern that she needed to increase as she started from the bottom. The marking pins helped even though she didn't like using them and avoided them at all costs in other projects. When she was done with the first sleeve at the end of March, she decided to take a one week break from the dress.

Her new contract for a remote work company, life, and other wedding planning details interfered and one week turned into a month before she could start on the second sleeve. By that time, she already forgot how frustrating it was to knit the sleeve. But she also forgot little tricks and work-arounds she used on the pattern to improve it. So it involved a lot of looking back and forth for comparison to the first sleeve. By the time she was done, she was really sick of it.

But it was done two months before the wedding date. Now she was left with the last and most hateful part of the whole project - attaching the sleeves to the bodice.

She hated doing it even on the simpler sweaters she'd knitted. It required precision and patience, always resulted in some bulges that needed to be fixed (basically, start over) and always took too long. So long she could have finished knitting another sweater.

But Megan was not the one to give up. She tried attaching one sleeve to her wedding dress, spending six hours on it and realizing that attaching the skirt to the bodice that early presented an additional challenge of handling the large garment in the process. In the end, she was unhappy with the crude bulged look of it and carefully detached the sleeve in frustration.

Good thing she had her mother who actually loved these challenging tasks of dress making. The only problem was that she could only do it the weekend after, but they still had enough time before the wedding. Besides, work and other planning details required Megan's attention.

Her angel of a mom descended on the sleeves with skill and determination. They were done in a couple of hours, while David took his daughter to play paintball. Mom pinned the sleeves right on Megan (old school, she said) without prickling her once, and was done attaching them in less than two hours. "Gorgeous, honey, both you and the dress!" mom kept repeating, assessing their handy work. Megan just smiled, nodding through happy tears. They carefully put the finished dress on the dress form and protected it with a plastic cover Megan had forgotten to donate with her first wedding dress.

David's jaw dropped in admiration when he saw Megan in her dress on the day. As her father handed Megan over at the altar, David leaned in and whispered, "You look stunning, babe! Well worth the wait!"

When she looked up at him, happily smiling, he winked and asked, "Will you teach me to knit?"