It began with a naive compliment. Her words, “You’re so lucky to have that dress,” Until the following morning, when the clothing bag was gone, I didn’t give it any thought. My heart fell along with it.
I can still see her, soaked to the skin, and laughing like the rain was her dance partner.
Standing in a summer deluge, my mom is wearing her wedding gown, the veil draped over her shoulders like seaweed, and the lace clinging to her arms. When I first saw that picture, I must have been five years old. Shocked by the idea, I questioned, “How did you survive getting drenched like that?”“It was just a short shower, sweetheart. Then the rainbow came,” she remarked, laughing and shaking her locks like a wet dog.
Fabric and thread were not the only materials used to construct that outfit. It was sewn out of her. from the strength she left behind when she died six years ago, the joy she brought into our family, and the love she brought into her marriage. She made sure I received the dress before she passed away, which was when I was eighteen.
Not only the original, either.
A seamstress, handpicked by Mom, transformed it. The silhouette was revised, and the sleeves were made more contemporary. However, everything was still there, even the covered buttons she had previously clasped on her own wedding day, the scalloped trim she loved, and the delicate ivory lace from her bodice.
Awaiting my arrival.Unopened, hidden away in the back of my wardrobe, and tenderly wrapped in a garment bag. Untouched for six years till her.
As if she owned the air, my sister-in-law, Kayla, stormed through the door of my apartment two months prior to my wedding.
“Oh my god, you have to see this dress I’m wearing to the Goldsmith Gala,” she exclaimed as she spun around indoors while wearing her enormous sunglasses. “It’s black. Velvet. Plunging neckline. Sexy, but still classy. My boyfriend nearly passed out when he saw it.”
Kayla was constantly… A lot. A self-described socialite, Logan’s sister was the type of lady who turned any space into a stage. She fell onto my couch, kicked off her heels, and started scrolling through her phone, scarcely letting me get a word in.
As she tossed her platinum curls, she declared, “I swear, if I had your figure, I’d be unstoppable.” She stopped in the middle of her scroll and narrowed her eyes at the corner of my room.The clothing bag.
An octave was dropped in her voice. “Is that the dress?”
I paused. “Yeah. My mom’s.”
She stood, moved over slowly, fingers hovering like she was in a museum. “Wow…”
“It’s not just a dress,” I replied as I walked up to her side. “It was hers. She had it altered for me before she passed. I’m saving it for my wedding.”
With an odd expression on her face, Kayla turned to face me. “You’re so lucky. I’d kill to wear that once.”I smiled tightly and closed the bag completely. “It’s not really… for wearing. Not until my wedding.”
She didn’t answer.
The clothing bag was gone by the following morning.
I initially believed I was having hallucinations. I tore my room apart. called Logan. made a call to Kayla. Texted, again and again. No response.
“Don’t freak out! I just borrowed it for the gala. You’ll barely notice 😊” was her final text response, sent at 3:12 p.m.
I sensed the slant of the floor.
I gave her a call. No answer.
I sent a message: “Kayla, you took my mom’s dress without asking. That’s not borrowing. That’s stealing.”
Three dots appeared. Then disappeared. then reappeared.
At last: “Relax. It’s just fabric. You’re being weirdly dramatic.”
Logan walked in just as I hurled my phone across the couch.
He stopped. “What happened?”
I shook as I looked up. “Your sister stole my mom’s wedding dress for a party, and thinks I’m being dramatic.”
Slowly, he blinked. “She what?”
I regret using my phone later that evening. Instead, though, I clicked on Instagram.
She was there.
Kayla. in my wedding gown.
As if she were a red carpet queen, she stood at the gala with one hand on her hip beneath a marble archway. Flashbulbs. flutes of champagne. smug smile. Was one of the dress’s straps coming loose from her shoulder, ripped, and close to the hem?
a stain from red wine. enormous.
The white lace felt like a wound that was bleeding.
I let out a painful gasp. I clicked through the remainder of the carousel with a trembling thumb.
The headline read: “Vintage with a twist 😉 Who says you can’t make something old unforgettable?”
I didn’t even consider it. I gave her a call. She laughed as if I had called her mid-joke when she heard the third ring. “Oh my god, chill out! You’re gonna scare me into thinking something’s actually wrong!”
I growled. “You wore it,” I said. “You destroyed it.”
She gave a snort. “Relax. It’s just fabric. You should thank me — I made it famous. That dress is trending.”
“I hate you.”
“Wow,” she exclaimed abruptly. “Someone’s on their period.”
I hung up.
With the torn garment balled up in my arms and tears streaming down my face, I knocked on the seamstress’s door at midnight.
She held the bag up carefully, opened it, and remained silent for a long moment. Then she ran her hand over the torn lace close to the neck. Just the thing Mom had picked out. She shook her head.“Honey…” she said, her voice breaking. “The lace your mom left? It’s shredded. The hem is ruined. It’s not repairable. I’m so sorry.”
I wanted to throw something, yell, or maybe pass out. However, I heard the door behind me open before I could move.Logan.
His jaw was clinched so tightly that it appeared to ache, and he was pale with rage.
“Where is she?” he demanded between tight teeth.
I shook my voice and mumbled, “She thinks I should thank her.”
Logan was silent for a moment.
He cornered Kayla at her apartment that evening. I didn’t know what had transpired till later. But I heard the ranting through the phone when he contacted me after. Heard her voice break like a piece of glass.
She cried out, “You always loved me more, Logan!” “You are marrying the wrong girl. Admit it!”
That was it. It all made sense.
Not only did she despise me, but she also found it unbearable that I was being married to her brother. She felt that I was too uninteresting, too impoverished, too… Not worthy. In her own perverse way, she had loved him like a childhood toy that she was forbidden from touching by others, rather than romantically.When Logan got home, he embraced me as if he could protect me from anything. “I’m gonna fix this,” he promised. “Whatever it takes.”
Over the course of the following four days, he located fabric artisans, antique lace sellers, and miracle-working seamstresses. I, meanwhile, sat on the floor, holding on to that picture of Mom in the rain and the damaged garment.“She said the rainbow always comes after the storm,” I answered quietly.
Logan gave me a gentle glance. “Then I’ll find your rainbow.”
I wept more on the day the dress was fixed than I did when Kayla ruined it.
Instead of being replaced, every lace detail has been meticulously recreated. Vintage threads that were hand-dyed to match the original ivory were used in its reimagining. With her hands shaking a little, the seamstress showed me how the neckline had been recreated from pictures of my mother.
She smoothed the bodice and said softly, “She’s in here,” “Every stitch. We brought her back.”
I nodded, my throat heavy with emotion, unable to speak. My hand out to touch the lace. I felt a tingle in my fingers. Once more, it was more than simply fabric. She was the one.
I inhaled her. Rain and lavender.
The sky was ideal the morning of our wedding, until it wasn’t.Just as the guests were being seated, clouds began to sweep in. The trees were battered by the wind. I had just put on my dress when the first drop fell.
Heart pounding, I gazed out the window.
Logan cautiously avoided giving me a full view as he peered in. “Little drizzle,” he remarked, his smile skewed. “You okay?”
I looked in the mirror. “She loved the rain, you know. She always said the rainbow came after.”
“Well…” he said, displaying the forecast on his phone. “I think we’re in for one hell of a rainbow.”
Nervously, we both chuckled.
Guests dispersed under umbrellas outside. The music was stopped, the chairs were cleaned, and my chest constricted. Was the universe pulling a nasty prank?
Then… It ceased. The rain stopped as soon as I reached the top of the aisle.
Then, behind Logan, a rainbow appeared as if by magic, extending across the sky.
Tears rolled down my cheeks as I gasped. The string quartet resumed their performance. The visitors pivoted.
And I moved forward, step by step, wearing my mother’s dress, which was a miracle in every way. Each thread was sewn against treachery. Each piece of lace holds a memory.
Logan’s eyes never left mine as I got closer to the altar. Whispering, he grabbed my hands and said, “She’s here.”
I gave a nod. “She sent the rainbow.”
There was a stir at the back just before we started our vows.
safety. Kayla, too.
She had changed appearance. Her hair was wild and her makeup was smudged, as if she hadn’t slept for days. In stark contrast to the elegance she displayed at the event, she wore a silver cocktail dress. “Logan, wait! Please! Let me talk to you—” she said raised her voice.
Security intervened. Logan didn’t look at all.
He said, “She’s not getting in,” “This is your day. No one ruins it.”
I released a breath I was unaware I had been holding. Before I even got to the vows, she was gone.
I swear the sky brightened when we shared a kiss. Above us, the rainbow continued to extend like a promise.
Everyone continued praising the attire at the reception afterwards.
Someone said, “Where did you find it?” “It looks like it came straight out of a dream.”
I grinned. “It did. A long time ago.”
Because of that dress? It was almost gone. Torn. stained. stolen out of envy. I nearly lost it forever.
However, love, loyalty, and the conviction that even damaged things can be repaired rescued it—we saved it.
That dress carried me through my vows and walked me down the aisle.
It kept her in place.
And I grinned through joyful tears as Logan spun me around in the gentle dance floor lights while speaking softly in my ear.
I muttered, “She would’ve loved today,”
Logan gave me a temple kiss.
He remarked, “She sent the rain,” “But you? You were always the rainbow.”
Kayla believed she was powerful.
She believed that ripping the dress would rip something more profound, like my bond with my mother, my prospects with Logan, and my tranquility. However, she was mistaken. She misjudged the endurance of love. What I could live with.I didn’t only wear the gown she attempted to destroy; I stood in it at the altar. It belonged to me. I felt the blessing of my mother’s lace brushing on my shoulders. Her strength was like armor around my waist. With each stride I made in the direction of the guy I loved, her memory touched my flesh.
And outdoors? Kayla stood by herself outside the chapel doors.
She had arrived without permission, her face smeared with desperation as she begged to be admitted.
Her voice was stern as she said, “I just need to talk to him,” to security. “I deserve to be there! I’m his sister!”
But, truly, she wasn’t. No more.
Logan had already decided. Not only between two women, either. It was between the future he was prepared to create and the past she refused to let go of.
“She’s not family to me anymore,” he had told me in a forceful, low voice only days before the wedding. “Family doesn’t try to destroy your happiness. Or hurt the person you love just to keep control.”
The Logan of old, who would make allowances for her, avoid her outbursts, and go over and beyond to maintain harmony, was no longer there.
He was replaced with a man who had selected us. And that was all.
Logan had been treated like a gift by Kayla for years, a trophy she was unwilling to give away. It wasn’t love, but she called it that. It was a fixation, an ownership. She simply benefited from her perverted notion of loyalty.
She believed that the wedding would be ruined if she damaged my dress. That Logan would view me as “dramatic,” or revert to her in remorse, like he once did.
However, she failed to recognize a crucial fact: anything based on love cannot be destroyed. Someone who has finally opened their eyes cannot be controlled.At the altar, Logan did more than just stand next to me. For himself, for me, and for the future we were deciding on, he got up.
He told me the night before the wedding, “I’m sorry it took me this long.” “To finally see her for who she is.”
With a full heart, I gazed at him. “You saw it when it mattered.”
That was the reality. Kayla vanished from my thoughts like a nightmare as I walked down the aisle wearing that restored gown.
She received precisely what she was due: no retaliation. Not relevant. Her sibling, her hold, and her spotlight were all taken away from her.
Conversely, I benefited more than I ever imagined. Under a rainbow that seemed to be my mother’s whisper from above, I married the love of my life in a dress that held her soul:
Sweetheart, you survived the storm.
And I did.
In that dress, I danced. It made me laugh. With the lace catching the wind like wings, I whirled in the brightness. Each stitch conveyed a tale of perseverance rather than devastation.
We discovered peace after all of the turmoil, treachery, and heartache. We were happy. We located us.
Logan took me aside and stared at me while placing his hands on my waist as we bid the guests our final goodbyes that evening. He said, “Would you change anything?”
I grinned.
“Not a thing,” I said to myself. “Even the rain brought me here.”