My Tiaras and Me

For a long while now I have loved tiaras. Maybe I watched too many Disney movies as a kid, but for me, wearing a tiara made me feel like the most special girl in the world. Now I know what you’re thinking—pageant girl alert. But that’s not it at all. I never participated in beauty pageants and besides the overly huge, so bright you can’t look directly at them, tiaras from pageants do not appeal to me at all. It’s different for me. When I wear a tiara I feel like I’ve stepped into a magical world where anything can happen. I’m going to give you a brief history of my experience with tiaras.

1. Spring Break with The Little Merskank

It was sophomore year of college. My parents continued to want to go on trips with me, but I was at the point where I couldn’t bear to spend an entire week alone with them. I love my parents, but their style of travel is very different than mine. So naturally I  Convinced the Little Merskank to go along with me. We were going to Sun Valley, Idaho, where absolutely no one knew us, and coincidentally we had recently purchased cheap tiaras from the dollar tree. So we decided we’d have some fun on the trip. We wore our tiaras every day, walking around without a care in the world. And our tiaras also injected us with some extra confidence (as all tiaras do), so we decided to find the most eligible guys in Sun Peaks and attempt to flirt with them. We soon realized that there were not many eligible men of the right age around town, but instead of despairing we did our best to use our wiles on the few male baristas in town. We may not have gotten any phone numbers, but we did get an awesome story out of it.

2.Senior Year

In our senior year, I had a brilliant idea for the naughty princesses. Since we had dubbed ourselves royalty and since it was our last spring together at college, I decided that we all needed tiaras. It would signify our bond, plus it would look awesome. We always dressed up and  went out to dinner anyway—why not take it to the next level? It took some convincing but finally we all went to the mall searching for the perfect crowns. This is something that girls should realize too—trying on tiaras is fun. We went back and forth between these two stores debating a deliberating, and finally we all came out crowned and fabulous. Some of my favorite pictures of us are from our times wearing those tiaras together.

3.My Wedding

Now, when I got married, it wasn’t even a question of  whether or not I would wear a tiara. It was a given. And so my search began. I didn’t want something huge that would distract people, and I wanted the design to fit the design of my dress. One of the big problems when I started looking though, was that real, wedding tiaras are expensive. Just because they were sold in a bridal shop, they had the nerve to charge $150 bucks.  I started to despair that I wouldn’t find what I was looking for. But then, when I went in to my dress fitting and mentioned the problem to the saleslady, she informed me that they had a whole bin of tiaras that were half off on clearance because they’d been display models. I was overjoyed! I dug through the bin in excitement and came out with the most beautifully delicate little tiara that had pearl and rhinestone flowers on it. When I donned the tiara with my wedding dress, I felt complete.

Now because of this love of tiaras, I have been wearing one on my birthday for years now. It seems inevitable. But then I came to this year, my 24^th birthday. My husband was taking me out to dinner, so I dressed up in the beautiful long red dress and curled my hair. I looked in the mirror and thought—man, I look classy. Do I really want to put a tiara on? I tried on my various tiaras and took them off again, debating. Maybe it was time I grew up. Maybe I was getting too old to be wearing tiaras on my birthday. I sighed and set aside my tiaras. But then accessing myself one more time, I thought—what am I doing? It doesn’t matter if it subtracts from the classiness of my outfit. I’m not trying to impress anyone. Damn it, nobody can stop me from feeling like a princess on my birthday.  The tiaras are just a part of my identity. Maybe someday I will let them go, but for now I proudly adorn my tiara and step out as the princess that I am.