I have the best story to kick off your work week today, lovely readers – especially if you’re sentimental like this gal.
If you’re a regular reader of the Brightside Films blog, then you know the importance of finding the perfect wedding dress. Some women will spend months trying on hundreds of gowns until they finally find “the one”. But what if your perfect dress has been sitting in your family’s closet all this time? That’s the case for bride Julia Cain.
Julia had the honour of not only wearing her mother’s wedding dress but also her grandmother’s wedding dress when she walked down the aisle on March 12th this year. The vintage gown had been passed down from the two women before her (and will hopefully continue to do so).
All three women wore the same lace dress on their respective wedding days with slight alterations. Of course by the time Julia tried it on (63 years after her grandmother’s wedding and 33 years after her mother’s), it was discoloured, needed to be modernized and taken in. Julia removed the arm length sleeves and turned them into straps, lowered the neckline and back, sewed in two crinoline skirts for a little extra oomph and added a shiny new satin ribbon around her waist (something old and a little something new!)
“This gown was everything I wanted in a wedding dress: V-neck, full skirt, vintage charm and one-of-a-kind,” Julia said to Huffington Post when interviewed about the story. “My grandmother had fantastic taste, and it’s no surprise her gown is still as spot-on as it was in the 1950s.”
Julia’s grandmother Phyllis Jo Raymond purchased the wedding dress in 1953 at a department store for her wedding on May 9, 1953. She wore the original version of the gown with a hoop skirt underneath for more volume. When her daughter Susan (Julia’s mother) got married almost exactly 30 years later on April 23, 1983, she added some extra lace to the jacket and took out the hoop skirt to lengthen the dress.
“I would love if a future daughter or family member wore the dress, but I definitely wouldn’t expect it,” Julia said. “My mother never pressured me into using her gown, and I wouldn’t want to do that to any bride-to-be. If nothing else, the leftover lace can always be turned into something like a ring pillow.”
Ready for an extra wonderful plot twist? What makes this story even more special is another common denominator between the three women – the same lucky man walked all three of them down the aisle. Yes, you read that right. All three of them!
Julia’s grandfather, Harold Traver, walked her down the aisle when she wed her husband Lance last month. Not only that, but he walked his daughter Susan (Julia’s mother) down the aisle in 1983 when she wed Julia’s father and of course he walked down the aisle with his wife Phyllis (Julia’s grandmother). 3 brides, 1 dress and 1 very lucky grandpa. Talk about standing the test of time!
If you’re thinking of wearing and re-working a vintage dress, here are some pointers from Julia “Give yourself ample time. It took months to rework the dress,” she explained. “Find a talented tailor and communicate with him or her clearly about your wants, the costs, and the timeline. Make sure the dress can handle a cleaning and extensive handling before investing in the alterations. And don’t be turned off from the idea just because you don’t love the original dress! I certainly wasn’t planning on getting married in a super-high sweetheart neck dress with a damaged lace jacket — it’s amazing what a few changes can do!”
