My wife has grown less happy with my kilt as time has gone on. She was OK with my getting married in it, and OK attending Burns suppers with me. She was fine when I bought her a hostess skirt in my tartan and she wore that for years. However she seems to have a problem with my just wearing it to wear it, even if I am going to an event where others will be wearing kilts. She even asked me why I had to wear it to the Tartan Day Parade, and was confused when I said that I did not HAVE to wear it anywhere.

I think this goes back to an unintentional peacock moment when we were engaged, that began to sour her to the kilt. She was very big into ren faires at the time and had a friend make her a relatively fancy dress for walking around a festival in. She convinced me to try and dress up for the ren faire. When I said I didn't have anything, she said to just wear my kilt. So I grabbed the kilt, a pair of moccasin boots (never worn with the kilt before) a colonial shirt (somewhat similar to the oft maligned kilt shirts but not quite), and my full mask skunk sporran. At the last minute I grabbed a walking stick my mother had brought me from her trip to Scotland. To my way of thinking I looked horrible, wearing stuff cobbled together from my closet while she looked quite good in her dress. Then IT happened. We were approached by a member of the faire staff about joining in their costume parade because they liked what they saw. My wife graciously accepted and thanked the staff for the invitation to which they replied, Oh no, not you, him, we were only inviting him to be in the parade. Of course I declined in order to save the engagement and because I could not fathom how this look could have been better than anyone Else's at the faire. Over the years my wife has grown to hate that story and I can only tell it here because she doesn't read these forums. Oddly enough it has also helped me put all ren faire costuming into perspective.