My White Whale: Call Me Ishmael, Yo.

  Ask any bride what she went through in order to find her dress, and the answer you’ll never hear is, “I walked into a store. I saw a dress. I liked it. I bought it.” Ohhh noooo. That is not the way of it. The buying of the Dress of Your Life is never such a simple, pedestrian affair. Nay, the arrangement of one dressmaker making, one store selling, and one consumer consuming belies the epic, Melvillian odyssey that is the quest for the One. The stalking and procuring of the garment encompasses every plot conflict in the literary world: Man vs. Man (have you ever been to a bridal shop? Claws at the ready, people), Man vs. Nature (while dress hunting, it’s as if the whole world- the flora and fauna, the atmosphere, the very firmament of heaven all conspire against you), and -most assuredly, Man Vs. Himself. Or, as Disney chose to put it:

Please to be getting your sea legs on, for after the jump, we board the Good Ship Nuptualus and decend into a madness as deep as the fathoms of the Sea.