Tattoo Tuesday

(Wouldn’t that be a fun new theme for every Tuesday?)

Some eyebrows were raised at our wedding when a noticeable mark was showing from above the seam of my wedding dress.

Exhibit A:

Yes, that is a tattoo.

In fact, I have several tattoos, none of which you could see on our wedding day.

Except for that one. And it was front and center.

Let’s inspect closer, shall we?


It says ‘River City’ --the nickname for Richmond--and there is a heart at the beginning of it. I got it when I was 21 and thought of it as my way of expressing my independence and living on my own. This is totally embarrassing in retrospect, but back then I thought it was genius.

It’s right on my ribs, which was a mistake for two reasons:

1) I thought I could hide it easily.
2) TATTOOS ON YOUR RIBS HURT.

For some reason I felt the need to hide it from my parents. In my defense, I hid that bad boy for 5 years, although family trips to the beach were complicated. I was pretty proud of myself.

But then Mike had to go and propose and I realized the jig was up: wedding dress shopping was going to be my downfall. Momma C would see the tattoo and freak. I decided it was best to fess up and begged for forgiveness—my mom proved her unending coolness and said “It’s your body; do what you want.” Or at least that’s what I heard…right Mom?

When I found ‘the dress’ we realized it would still show the tattoo and debated the options: cover it with make-up? That was soon dismissed because it wasn’t worth messing up the dress. The final decision was to fit the top within an inch of my life and hope for the best. All in all, I thought I was pretty successful at hiding the tattoo, partially because I couldn’t breathe most of the night so I know that top was pretty tight.



When I see pictures of the tattoo peeking out of the dress I do cringe a little. It’s not that I’m ashamed; I just didn’t want to be considered “trashy-looking” on our wedding day. At least now I have some leverage when our future daughter comes home begging for a tattoo one day!