My year of careening crazily

Have you ever had a year when everything changes completely?

A year ago, I was a wandering graduate student in the Himalayas, wearing the same three pairs of hiking pants over and over. I had a lovely boyfriend back in the States, with whom I talked regularly, but my life felt pretty footloose and fancy-free (on a good day; and nauseatingly unmoored, on a bad one.)

Now, everything is changing utterly. I moved back to the States, stopped wandering through villages and subsisting on rice. We bought and moved into a house - our first time living together.

After spending all of this century (!) as a graduate student (yeah, since fall 2000), I am about to move to the other side of the desk, to resume getting a paycheck, to start paying back my student loans.

In the next six months, I will become a professor and a wife. After so long as a student and a singleton, it makes my head spin.

Symbolizing these transitions, I have purchased the two most expensive items of clothing I've ever owned in the past six months.

One, as you would suspect, is a gorgeously flowing white gown, about which I will say nothing else, as Mr. Barefoot turns out to be secretly following my blog.
(Hi ya!)

The other is also flowing and gorgeous, but in navy twill. I looks something like this:

I'll wear it on May 17, exactly 5 months and 1 week, before I wear my other insanely expensive piece of clothing.

How's this for a bridesmaid's look? A number of my friends have, or have worn such gowns, so I'm thinking it could work.