Oh these gorgeous flying dress videos?
Let me take you into what this moment REALLY felt like….
We’re running around Santorini following our photographer and official “dress thrower” (yep, that’s how they get those dresses to fly so beautifully like that!). It’s windy and a bit chilly – but thankfully the cloudy skies have mostly cleared.
The crazy amount of extra fabric keeps slipping out of my hands, so I’m basically tripping over myself and trying not to fall off the edge of the various buildings and cliffs down into the ocean below.
At one point, I drop my dress-fabric-train-thing into a bunch of water on the path, so then I’m wet too. To which my dress thrower responds by sternly chastising me, as though I missed the classes on “how to hold up 100 feet of fabric while running around a Greek Island” that everyone else took in school.
There are people EVERYWHERE.
So we’re completely holding up foot traffic as they throw our dresses over and over again and we try to smile and look beautiful and ignore the annoyed pedestrians.
Actually, not all of them are annoyed. About 1/10th of them decide we are the most beautiful thing they’ve ever seen, so they are taking pictures too and yelling out words of encouragement. Which honestly, was pretty nice. Too bad they couldn’t rub off more on the other 90% of people passing by.
We are also navigating around the 10,000 other women with flying dresses that are running around with THEIR photographers and official “dress throwers,” trying to get the perfect shot in the exact same locations we are. So that’s fun.
One of those photographers grabs my phone from me as I’m trying to take a behind-the-scenes video of Gigi. He initially tries telling me what I could do better, but then decides I’m a lost cause and just records some slow-motion videos on my camera himself.
OH – I get it now! From that point on, I’m the world’s best slow-mo video taker. I’ve got this thing DOWN.
So back to our little adventure…
As we perch on a set of stairs above a 5-star restaurant, trying desperately not to fall to our deaths on top of the diners below, a whole new set of fun circumstances arise.
You see, we are wearing very little underneath these dresses. For me, it’s a set of pasties and a pair of nude thong underwear. So as they throw our dresses up again and again, the wind begins to pick up and do its best to help us out. Which results in us flashing the poor people trying to enjoy their fresh-caught sea bass below.
It isn’t their fault that they looked up at the sweet mother & daughter photoshoot happening above them, only to see a little more than they probably would have wished! Oy vey…
But we don’t stick around long enough to see their reactions. We are off again – headed to our 6th or 7th location in less than an hour – the beautiful bell tower you see in these videos.
Oh, the bell tower. The site where I would either face my fear of heights and come out victorious – or I wouldn’t live to tell the tale.
We clamber to the top just as the sun is setting. The photographer (who is clearly bored of his job as he does no less than SIX of these shoots per day) instructs me to hold on to the edge of the bell thingymajig and basically hang off of it – all while they throw my dress up again and again and it starts catching in the wind like a kite that threatens to pull me right off the building.
But I have to focus. I need to twist my body to face him more (which results in my grip feeling more and more precarious). Now extend my leg out more in front of me – and make sure that toe is pointed. (Yep, definitely feeling like I’m falling.) Now smile and try to look like I’m having the best time of my life!
But you guys – we did it. We did the freaking thing.
I’ve been oohing and ahhing over these flying dress photoshoots for over a year, and as a photoshoot lover, I knew I had to do it.
Gigi was a total champ. She made hanging off that bell tower look easy. Which is when I was able to snap this stunning slow-mo video of her (take that – Greek photographer man!). Whew – I wish I’d inherited her lack of a fear of heights.
The moral of this story is: The fantasy doesn’t always match the reality. And the highlight reel only shows you the highlights.
But it’s still worth it. I’d do it all over again.
Because sometimes you have to get a little uncomfortable to fulfill your dreams. 😉
xoxo,
Makena
