One Perfect Day—or rather the series of events and disasters that occur in order to prepare for that day

Ok. See that Demon? That's how I felt throughout parts of the day.

Day 1—I don’t know what this fabric is exactly (because I don't know the Cambodian word for silk organza) but it’s perfect!

Days have been flying by faster than the amount of time it takes locusts to descend upon a season’s crop to consume and decimate a village’s livelihood. The early morning hours, before everyone else is awake, is the only time I find enough peace and quiet for myself. This trip has been all about figuring out how to balance the expectations, needs and desires of several different people, all wanting different things and unable to communicate with one another directly. It’s been difficult to carve out time for myself but this morning, before our sight visits and meetings with individuals, is going to be all about me. I’m going to go shopping for the material that I will be using for my wedding dress.

Today Eng, a second cousin of mine, is taking the day off from her business—making and cooking pro hut trei, a delicious and salty fish paste that when friend is a yummy fish cake, in order to help us navigate through Olympic’s labyrinth of a textile warehouse. Yesterday, our failed attempt to shop in Olympic on our own made me break down and cry in frustration. The thousands of shopper, hot heat and entourage of 15 people (including my 77 year old mother and two disabled siblings) also contributed to the breakdown. Today will be different because I’ll only be going with Momo, Sakura and Eng as opposed to my whole family (that was my mom’s idea) and today is Monday (peaceful) and not Sunday (totally not peaceful).

Olympic is 3 stories of outlets, textiles, motorcycle parts, noodle shops and a fresh local market. It is a city block wide and long and is filled with stalls that are about 4’x6’ stuffed with reams upon reams of fabric and one or two people waiting to strike a deal with you. In one section you can find stacks of beautiful hand dyed Khmer silks, in others intricate batik designs on cool cotton, cashmere Burberry and Chanel prints and occasionally creamy satin organza. It is really easy to get lost here because the sight of so many beautiful textiles, all at a fraction of what you would pay in any US store, steals and holds all of my attention. I can't answer Sakura's questions because I'm so focused, I don't hear all the whispered comments about my tattoos because I am touching everything I can get my hands on.

I don’t know the Khmai words for silk organza or sateen, so instead I walk or jump into stalls (some are elevated), to feel and touch. The dress I want, a 40’s inspired wedding dress is remake of a vintage dress that I was given this past summer in Wisconsin during my first bicycle tour. The dress, not traditionally like any other wedding dress, though worn around the shoulders and faded in some areas from wear, is more significant and perfect to me than any impersonal commercial wedding dress that I could ever find.

An hour into wandering around Olympic I find a beautiful champagne colored satin like fabric, it’s perfect. I buy 5 meters of it, enough for the dress, a skinny belt, and a short-cropped jacket—all for $7.50 US. It’s time to go.

After spending the past couple of hours slowly wandering through Olympic’s textile wing, we pick up the pace to snake through it’s market place. The sun is heating up the wet ground and the smells coming from the food and animals that the vendors are selling fill the air. We pass by a noodle stand, steam carrying the scent of freshly fried garlic, green onion, rice noodles, pork and fishsauce. Then we duck around stalls full of somewhat live mud fish where women delicately perched on small pads, skillfully hack off head from tail and separate filet from bone. To the right are freshly plucked and slaughtered chickens, rows of rubbery looking carcasses with heads still intact. And directly to the left of that are live chickens waiting for their fate as each customer carefully examines them to pick out the game that will feed a family of 8 tonight. It’s starting to rain again so we quickly hail a TukTuk to take us back to my mom’s house so that we can gather radio equipment and other materials for our meetings today.

Riding a TukTuk is not as romantic as it sounds. Though the benches are comfortable enough, most of the time you’re sitting in gridlock traffic inhaling the exhaust fumes of motor vehicles that wouldn’t pass any smog test if there was such a regulation that existed here. And remember that game frogger? Well, it’s like real time frogger times ten thousand in Phnom Penh—almost comical, almost surreal, definitely hectic and crazy.

Tomorrow Sew Yin, my cousin Hun’s mother, will help us make our way through the maze of another market. It’s stalls, shielded by alternating blue tarp and thin sheet metal, are made of plywood, all elevated two feet above ground in case of flooding from the monsoon season, and all much smaller than 4’x6’.

Day 2—the making of two dresses

This morning has been full of tears, yelling and wanting to ram my head against a concrete wall repeatedly. It’s 8 in the morning and I can’t find the material I bought yesterday for the wedding dress. Everyone is frantically searching through everyone else’s stuff and yelling at my sister who has this terrible habit of needing to put everybody else’s stuff away and in the process, accidentally misplacing things. My mom who becomes more and more angry with each passing minute of futile searching, looks at me and see’s that I have given up and am sitting on her bed and crying.

“Forget it, it’s not worth it. It’s just a dress any way,” I try to say in between the snot and tears of my hysterically sobbing.

“We are NOT going anywhere until we find that damn material!” my mom yells at everyone, refusing to give up.

I suddenly hate having to make a wedding dress. Who would have thought that doing such a simple thing could have turned into such a fiasco. And again, I think about all the research I’ve done about wedding culture, all the conversations that Liam (my amazing partner) and I have had in order to create a meaningful wedding that wasn’t about consumerism and whatever other bullcrap that the wedding industry pushes on us—I just can’t believe I’m having this moment where I can’t find this damn material, where I’m laying on my mom’s bed sobbing, and where I just want to say screw the wedding! What was the point of reading, "One Perfect Day--the Selling of the American Wedding"?! We should just elope! Or have permanent partner status dammit!

And then Momoko walks in. And says, “Oh, sorry. I’ve had your material this whole time with me.”

A series of we found it, we found it! echoes throughout the house in English and Khmer. My mom, relieved, looks up and laughs. I am part stunned and relieved but mostly embarrassed. So this is what it’s like to be a Bridezilla.

Sew Yin guides us through the marketplace. We meet up with a skilled seamstress tucked away behind an industrial sewing machine that sits among stalls of traditional Khmer wedding textiles. The glint of a deep teal bordered by a traditional Khmer motif catches my eye—I find the perfect material for my Khmai wedding dress. I get measured while explaining what I want.

And then I ask, “How much is it going to be to make my wedding dress?”

$15 US.

On the way back in the TukTuk, Momoko squeezes my leg, “it wouldn’t be a wedding dress without the tears.”

And I am grateful for having a good friend that can see how embarrassed I am, is still supportive and there for me even in my worst moments. I realize all of the hyper emotional traps that I’ve been trying to avoid in order to be “above it all” well, maybe wasn't so bad to go through; afterall, when else can you justify throwing temper tantrums in your adult life? I realize that instead of trying to be calm and cool about everything for the sake of trying to be calm and cool, I should just enjoy the process regardless of it’s ups and it’s downs.

And getting a wedding dress made for under $25? Well shoot, throw in the misplaced fabrics fiasco, I'll take the stress on to gladly save $1500.