Let wedding dresses stay in the wardrobe

I WAS admiring the wedding photos of a recently married friend this week when I asked her what she planned to do with the dress – a beautiful, full-skirted, ivory affair, selected after many months of painstaking searching. It had cost a small fortune. She shrugged. “I’ll probably just leave it in the closet,” she said. “Or sell it. Whatever.”

That’s the thing about wedding dresses: in the run-up to the big day, they seem like the most important sartorial item you’ll ever buy. But they’re usually doomed to a dismal afterlife, relegated to a hanger in the wardrobe of the spare room, gradually gathering a thick layer of dust.

Or at least that’s what happens if you’re an ordinary mortal. If you’re Victoria Beckham, you might find other things to do with your Vera Wang frock, like posing in it nearly two decades later in the new edition of ‘Vogue’.

It’s hard to know what exactly is the point of this peculiar photoshoot, other than to remind readers that VB is as preternaturally thin today as she was 19 years ago in Luttrellstown Castle.

But it does prove once again that celebrities are fundamentally not like us: most women I know wouldn’t be seen dead in their wedding dress again, for assorted reasons. One laments how low-cut hers was (‘I would never wear something like that now!’ she gasps in horror) while others (I count myself in this group) would need several intensive liposuction sessions before even attempting to get near it. And most dresses, no matter how beautiful they are on the day, eventually fall victim to fashion’s ever-changing whims; you might have looked like Princess Diana in your spectacular meringue back in 1986, but if you popped it on today, you’d look more like Miss Havisham.

I always planned to sell my wedding dress, but six years later, still haven’t got round to it. It hang sin the wardrobe upstairs, a reminder of a happy day, a slimmer waist, and a rather cavalier attitude towards a pre-ordained budget. I’m sure Victoria would approve of that part, at least.