Dad made wedding dress!
Saturday 14th June 2008
As we stood outside yet another shop window, I rolled my eyes, fed up.
'What a meringue,' I sighed, to my best mate, Siobhan Gill, 20.
As you've probably guessed, we weren't talking about meringues in the normal sense of the word. We were talking about my wedding dress. Or lack of one.
It was June 2007, and six months earlier, my boyfriend, Richard Wardrop, then 29, had popped the question with a gold and diamond ring. Once I'd got over the shock, first on my list of people to call was my dad, Walter Walker, then 44. We'd been really close ever since he and my mum, Alison Walker, 49, had divorced seven years ago.
'I'm thrilled, love,' he'd said, when I told him the news.
'Good job, too,' I'd laughed.
After all, Dad, Richard and I all worked together as chefs at the Bunchrew House Hotel near Inverness. It was no surprise when Richard booked the hotel for our ceremony on 10 March 2008. But now, I was starting to lose hope of finding a dress.
'If only I could have one made,' I moaned to Siobhan
But a designer dress would be way too expensive. Two months later, in August 2007, I still hadn't found anything, and was beginning to panic.
'You could always get your Aunty Margaret to make you one,' Dad suggested.
Dad's sister, Margaret, now 50, had made a beautiful dress for Dad's wife, Karen, then 34, when they'd got married in 2001.
'But she's not very well,' I said. 'I don't think it's fair to ask.'
Dad agreed.
'Hang on,' I said to Dad. 'Didn't you do a bit of sewing on Karen's dress...?'
Dad nodded suspiciously.
'Maybe you could make one for me?' I grinned.
OK, at 6ft tall with a beard, Dad wasn't your typical seamstress.But I knew he'd give anything a go once. Maybe another project was just what he needed. He laughed it off. But then, one night at work…
'Right,' he said. 'When are we going to buy the fabric then?'
'You mean…?' I stammered.
'Yep,' he said. Suddenly I panicked... Could he really do this?
Over the next couple of months, Dad and I spent hours looking at dress patterns.,By November 2007, I'd decided on a design with a full skirt and ruched top. Dad had even bought a tailor's dummy on eBay, so he could get the perfect fit. Buying the ivory satin in Edinburgh was an ordeal, though. The woman behind the counter eyed Dad suspiciously.
'Have you done this before?' she asked.
Dad shook his head and smiled, while the woman looked as if she was about to fall off her chair.
But as Christmas approached, the dress started to take shape. Dad had set aside the spare room in his two-bedroom house as a sewing room, and stayed up until 2am each night, working on his creation using a sewing machine Aunty Margaret had given him. And we got into a routine of me going round for a fitting each week. It was going fine, until January 2008, when disaster struck. Dad put a gold rivet in the wrong place and had to remove it with a vice. Then some oil from the vice smeared on the ivory satin.
Fortunately, with a good rub of Vanish, the stain disappeared, and finally, in February 2008, Dad was finished.
'It's done,' he said proudly. 'On time as well.'
'Thank you so much,' I gulped, giving him a big hug. 'You've been absolutely brilliant.'
A month later, on 10 March, Dad helped me into my dress in one of the hotel rooms. And as we looked in the mirror together, neither of us could hold back the tears.
'You look beautiful,' Dad sniffed, as I twirled in front of him.
I linked my arm through Dad's, as we walked into the room where the ceremony was taking place, and I felt like the luckiest woman alive.
Afterwards, as I sipped bubbly at the reception, Dad's needlework was the talk of the night. And guess what? He'd only gone and decorated the wedding cake, too. I couldn't believe it, I was so proud of Dad, I couldn't stop telling people what he'd done! He really is a dad in a million.