On beautiful fall weekends, Opal goes bride-watching in Central Park.

She checks the usual spots, starting with Bethesda Fountain. There is indeed a woman in a wedding gown being photographed, but she’s posing by herself so Opal suspects she isn’t a real bride. That doesn’t count.

Bow Bridge next. No luck. Which Opal thinks is a shame, because it’s so camera-ready there, the sky a perfect backdrop blue. Then, on her way over to Cherry Hill Fountain, Opal spots a wedding couple on top of a rock. Yay! She notes the woman’s untraditional cobalt blue high heels, which perfectly match the color of the man’s suit. They cause her to ponder the choices people make, and how weighty wedding-related decisions are because they can haunt you forever. She is not thinking about the choice of life partner so much, she’s thinking more about the shoes. And maybe the mini-skirt. These choices seem to make this bride happy today, but what about in ten years? Thirty years? Three weeks?

Opal sometimes tries to edge into the photographs. She likes imagining that one day someone leafing through the wedding album will notice her in a corner of a photo, and be like, “what the—?” Opal’s view is that if you have your wedding photos shot in Central Park, you’re just going to have to put up with random New Yorkers in your background.

The photographer tells the couple they can stop kissing and the woman leans on the man in order to strip off the shoes. They head down the rock in Opal’s direction. Opal hears the woman say, “Dude, I can’t even believe that thing fell off my dress,” and she is intrigued and wants to hear more, but then she has to quickly feign indifference because they’re walking right past her and if she isn’t mistaken the woman is eying her suspiciously. Opal pretends she doesn’t even see them.

There seems to be something slightly off with the wedding wares in NYC. Vera Wang doesn’t even have a dress on display. Carolina Herrera has one, but it’s quite plain and relegated to the side street. And at Tiffany’s, a puzzling image: in what Opal thinks of as the Audrey Hepburn window, a lone diamond on the ring finger of a red neon hand. The hand lights up, on and off.

Proceed with caution?

Opal is made from silk dupioni left over from the dress my flower girl wore at my wedding (that was my niece, Sarah, who is now all grown up), and her ears (Opal’s, not Sarah’s) are lined with taffeta from a dress I wore when I was a bridesmaid for a college friend. Both of those weddings took place on glorious October days. One of those marriages has managed to last, and one of those dresses can still be seen in framed photos on mantelpieces. Opal’s outfit is made from two men’s socks plus a bracelet that I got on some trip somewhere, I don’t remember where, but I don’t think I bought it because I thought I’d wear it, I’m pretty sure I bought it because it was locally made and I wanted to be supportive. Opal’s shoes are made from the covering peeled off a Valentine’s Day chocolate box. Her gold chain bracelet, the gold chain handbag handle, and the heart charm all came out of a Ziploc bag full of odds and ends contributed by my friend Elizabeth V., who is so cool that even her discarded odds and ends are cool.

Dupioni (also referred to as Douppioni or Dupion) is a plain weave crisp type of silk fabric, produced by using fine thread in the warp and uneven thread reeled from two or more entangled cocoons in the weft. This creates tightly-woven yardage with a highly-lustrous surface.

 Opal is in fact a bit tightly-woven. But lustrous.