Liz Patterson’s Final Wedding Dress with Teal and Lavender Roses from For Better or For Worse

Click for larger version; click for the list of dolls.

Since my 1940s wedding dress attached to a rant on For Better or For Worse is one of the more popular dresses on the blog, I feel like I should bring the saga to a close. Dee ended up altering the supposedly sixty-something-year old dress into something reasonably modern, the Ghost of Grandma made up for fanciful logic on the part of the cartoonist, the flowers were hideous and Liz ended up marrying that creep. All the way up until the vows were said I was hoping Liz would come to her senses, but immediately after that scene I was so over the whole thing, as evidenced by my putting off the dress for four months. If the end of the saga was boring its weird rebirth is mind-numbingly dreary, although sometimes I visit the Foobiverse!’s Journal out of nostalgia and their second-hand psychoanalysis of Lynn is amusing at times. I still follow Foob’s Paradise, though, which is a webcomic that continues the Pattersons’ adult lives.

Since I get so many search queries related to weddings, I’m thinking of doing some sort of “wedding week” perhaps, maybe after Christmas. If you have any pictures of wedding dresses you just love, feel free to post links in the comments so I can get inspired!

The Good Queen is so far holding her own over the other dead queen and the rest of her competitors. She would say that’s only the way things should be, but it’s not over yet. I will do a bonus costume or two for whoever wins, so if you adore one of them get your vote in, send your friends over, post to your weblog and beg your readers to vote for your favorite!

Mermaid Monday #4: Bride Mermaid in Red Tattered Wedding Dress with Iridescent Blue and Purple Tail

Click for larger version; click for the list of dolls.

My poll was a success! Thanks, everyone who voted. While black had a strong showing near the end, iridescent won the day, rather to my chagrin as I haven’t really drawn anything iridescent before… I think it worked out reasonably well, though not perfectly. I based the iridescent part on one of the pearls in this picture.

Mermaids associate the colors pink and red most strongly with weddings and brides, possibly due to red seaweed being a traditional bridal decoration. Pink has a rather old-fashioned feel and deep reds display the family’s wealth, because the deeper the color is, the harder it is to waterproof successfully, and so dark or rich colors weren’t available until more recently and they’re more expensive. These days, mermaid brides tend to choose a shade between pale pink and blood red that they think best suits their tail. (This means that mermaid bridesmaids grumble more than human ones if the bride insists on their wearing the same color; the green-tailed mermaid does not like the poppy red that sets off the bride’s black tail so well, and the mermaid with the light yellow tail feels washed out in the pale pink favored by the silver-tailed bride.) Pearls are also traditional wedding decorations, and a moderately priced rope of white pearls serves much the same function at a mermaid wedding as a toaster does at a wedding for American humans. Different-colored pearls, particularly black and rose ones, are most valued. Red seaweed is, of course, very popular, although seaweed of every type might be used much as humans might use flowers. Depending on where a mermaid lives and on the fashions, other flowers are popular; water lilies are often used in some areas, and tropical flowers such as hibiscus might be more popular in others. Not all mermaid wedding dresses are tattered, but it’s as hard for mermaid designers to resist as lace is for human ones, because of the strong romantic overtones.

For the veil, you will want to cut a straight line between the bottom of the crown, underneath the seaweed, and the veil. This way the doll’s head can be poked through.

New poll for this week: