Grandma's Wedding Dress

After my mom, my aunt, my husband, and I went to the regional family history conference we were all determined to do some more with our family history, and preserving our stories and our past. So one project that I'd put off for more than a year was my Grandma's Wedding dress.
The story is that as I was preparing for my wedding over a year ago I tried on all of my relative's wedding dresses, because I didn't want to spend the money to buy one myself. None of the dresses fit very well, except my Grandma Beulah Simmons' (my mom's mother) beautiful silk wedding dress. But at the time I felt it looked too old fashioned, and not "princess" enough for me. And also my aunt found a bag of beautiful fabric for $3, and my mom can sew wonderfully, so I was able to have my own dress, which I love.
But as they were trying to convince me to wear Grandma's dress, mostly for sentimental reasons, (and to save my mom a lot of work) they took it to a dry cleaner to prove to me that it was clean and in great condition to be worn. Well, after I was married we found out that you don't dry clean silk. So in talking to people about how to preserve it, now that it has been dry cleaned, they said to take pictures of it, and find a model who fits the dress to take the pictures of. So they asked me to come model the dress for pictures, since I'm the only person that can fit into it.
My Grandma was married Sept. 3, 1947, so this is a vintage 40's silk wedding dress. She sewed it by hand herself, for her own wedding.



The veil I'm wearing in this picture is actually mine from my wedding. The jewelry was my Grandma's jewelry (but not from her wedding.)

This is my Grandma's original wedding ring that I'm wearing in the picture below, it fits me perfectly. My mom (Grandma's youngest daughter) now wears that ring. I love the points on the sleeves

We were told to preserve the dress we should take measurements in the photos to show the construction of the dress as well. I love the ruffle/small train down the back of the dress. It was really hard to get a picture that showed it at all.

And the last measurement they had to take was the waist. Probably to mostly prove that at one point I did have a 26 inch waist, and so did my Grandma when she was married. The dress really does fit me perfectly. It's fun to know I'm so similar to my grandmother in build and shape.

I have put a copy of my Grandma's original wedding pictures on this blog.