Wedding Shoes: danced in, maybe dress-up.

 "Dancing in the moonlight
Everybody's feeling warm and bright
It's such a fine and natural sight
Everybody's dancing in the moonlight"
 - Dancing In The Moonlight, by King Harvest

My wedding shoes sit in an open box in my closet. White block sandals with a few rhinestones, which glimmer and wink at me in the light. Tiffany-blue underneath. They were selected after a long search not just for appearance but for ease of walking along garden gravel paths and dancing through the night.

As with my dress - a discarded Cinderella garment which needs to be cleaned yet whose crumpled, slightly dingy current appearance nevertheless warms my heart when I glance over at the mound of tulle on our home office couch - I have yet to decide what to do with them. Wedding finery to keep or sell or give away. Maybe I’ll wear the shoes again, if just the right event and dress come along, or maybe I’ll see if I have a future daughter who would delight in using them for playing dress-up one day. I can just picture her clomping around the house in them, happy as a queen.

Our photographer snapped a photo after the wedding of Andy looking at my shoes, the two of us giddily exclaiming over ever little thing. We didn’t see each other that day until I was walking down the aisle towards him, so afterwards we took in all the details: my dangly earrings, Andy’s dapper suit with the black silk accents, his boutonnière, and the blue clip-on streak woven into my hair which constituted the traditional “something blue”.

A thousand tiny moments colored the day, some captured on film and some living on in memory. My wedding shoes sit on their side in a box, their function well served and appreciated. If I’m in a particularly whimsical mood, I like to secretly imagine objects as having hidden feelings, like the household items in Beauty and the Beast or the nursery toys in The Velveteen Rabbit. Would they describe themselves as useful, ornamental, aloof, comfortable, restless, or maybe content? I feel that my shoes, which are charming yet functional, would appreciate a second life as a beloved dress-up item. Shake off the dust: it’s time to shine again. Go on and show your Daddy, little princess, and ask if they spark his memory. Ask what he remembers.