It's All About The Dress

This past weekend, I attended three Transitionals in different parts of the state and got to attend a meeting of one of my area Associations. The ladies in the Association were choosing a fabric for an Association dress and they all wanted to know about my dress choice. There is an old tradition in many area associations (which is a group of all of my Dragon Rider ladies in a particular defined area), that the association members make dresses so that they can be identified as part of that particular Association when they go visiting and at state wide events. Sometimes the group picks a fabric and everyone makes their own dress. Sometimes they also pick a pattern and everyone wears the same dress. The ladies wear these dresses for three years, until their Worthy Matron year, when they wear a dress that I get to choose for them. The dress I pick is their "forever" dress and they would wear it to special events forever, or until they become a Deputy or something else that gives them a different "forever" dress. I still have my "forever" dresses from my Worthy Matron years and if someone who was in my Association gets picked as a Deputy or something, I would wear that dress (if it still fits of course :-). Well the fabric selection went very well at the meeting. Some lovely prints had been brought to the meeting but there was a fairly clear overall winner in a beautiful pattern. I can't wait to see how the dresses look. The girls were kind enough to let me have a set of the patterns and there were several that they did not pick, but that I did like, so I might use one or more of them for something else. However, in every one of the three groups I met with this weekend, they all wanted to ask me if I had chosen their "forever" dress yet. I had to tell them that by tradition, I cannot pick a dress, or even a color for sure, until after the person ahead of me in line chooses her dress and color because you never want two years in a row to have the same color dresses. So the person ahead of me will reveal her dress in July, and I can start picking after that. But the discussion did raise some interesting issues about the selection of a dress. In my experience, picking a forever dress for your Worthy Matrons is as fraught with danger as choosing bridesmaid's dresses. Here you have two hundred ladies of every shape, size and coloring and you are going to stuff all of them into one dress. Let's be realistic about this. No matter what you pick, no matter what style, what color, etc., about a quarter of the ladies will look absolutely phenomenal, about half will look okay, but not great, because the color is good but the style is bad or because the style is good but the color is bad, and the last quarter are going to put on the dress and wish they were dead, or at least pray desperately for a stylish paper bag to complete the outfit. It is inevitable. One year, to try to minimize the problem, the WGM just chose a fabric and let everyone pick their own pattern and have their own dress made. You would think that the number of happy people would go up and maybe it did, but then you have some people who say how hard it was to find someone to make the dress or they couldn't find a pattern they liked, or they didn't think it looked as good when their dresses didn't match, so maybe this is a good solution and maybe it is not such a good idea. The other problem is that someone has to buy enough yards of the chosen fabric and then sell it back out to the members and this can involve quite a bit of an outlay of up front money and you could end up with a lot of leftover material too, because the last thing in the world you want is to run out. Still it is an option. Another concern I have heard running around is that lots of people like that I have black as one of my colors and a bunch of them want a black dress, but I have a whole 'nother bunch of people who do not think that it is proper to wear a black dress, so they want anything other than a black dress. Then some people want a skirt and top instead of a dress because that is easier for them and then other people don't like the way a skirt and top look and they want a dress. Oh! The madness! AAAHHH! Deep breath, remember you can't please everyone, deep breath, the same numbers will like it or hate it no matter what you pick, deep breath, is there a cave close by somewhere that no one will ever find me, deep breath, no, probably they would find me anyway, deep breath, okay, maybe we can tackle this mountain of a problem with a strong rope and lots of really good pitons and carabiners, deep breath, okay, we can do this, really, really, calm blue ocean, calm blue ocean, palm trees swaying in the breeze. Whew! In what is probably another radical break in tradition on my part, in my next letter to my girls, I am going to send them a question sheet, asking for feedback on all of the above issues, among other things, and give them a chance to tell me their thoughts. I will still have to make a decision and it still won't please everyone, but at least everyone will have had a chance to have had a say. That will give me some information on people's thoughts well before I have to start looking at dresses and deciding, since that can't happen before July at the earliest. Who knew the hardest part was going to be picking the dress? Next weekend, I am going to work on the annual inspection for my airplane and try to catch up with some of the rest of my life that I have been ignoring for the past eight weeks. Maybe I will even have time to sleep.