Brian and I got married in 2006 after a short engagement, with a wedding planning window of six months. I bought my wedding dress off-the-rack during a whirlwind weekend trip to Colorado to shop with my mom. I borrowed an extra suitcase from her for the return trip to Chicago and carefully stuffed the dress in, praying that Southwest wouldn’t lose the bag.

After our wedding, I had my dress cleaned and “preserved” in a big fancy cardboard box. Since 2006, the dress has moved from Chicago to Connecticut, back to Chicago, then onto Toronto, where it took up most of the tiny second bedroom closet in the condo we rented. When we bought a house in 2011, the dress came with us again, finding a permanent storage place in the basement.

There it has stayed for the last 10 years, with Brian periodically begging me to part with it. I’ve steadfastly refused. There was something about letting go of the dress that I just couldn’t do. At first, I wanted to save it for a hypothetical daughter. Not that she would want to wear it, but maybe want to see it — the ultimate princess dress. I remember being intrigued by my mom’s wedding dress, which she hadn’t kept, and wishing I could have seen it.

Now, in preparation for pursuing a dream we’ve had for year’s, we’re downsizing our lives, trying to fit everything into a 20-foot container. And I’ve finally had to let go of the dress. It’s one of many things I’m letting go of, but it’s been perhaps one of the hardest. I’m a terribly sentimental person, which means I tend to hold onto everything.

While it’s been hard to part with pieces of past chapters of my life, I hope that by paring down and living with (a lot) less, I’ll find some peace, simplicity and clarity. And while the lead up to letting go of the dress was terribly emotional (and involved one last round of picture taking), in the weeks since it’s been gone, it’s been barely a passing thought. A lesson I need to remember as I face the last two months of purging and packing!