Three Family Wedding Dresses

(email received on January 22, 2020)

Hello Kristina,

It is nice to hear from you.  I have shared the images of your dress with the Curator and she would be very happy to accept it into the collection.  It can be mailed to the highlighted address  below whenever you are ready, there in no rush.

Please let me know if you have any questions.

Best,
Megan 

Megan Osborne

Assistant Curator & Collections Manager

Avenir Museum | Department of Design and Merchandising

Colorado State University

            This morning I got out my wedding dress for the last time, spread it on the bed, and carefully wrapped the dress and the vest in white tissue paper folding it gently.  I was remembering 45 years ago in January 1975, having this long wool dress custom made in shop in Athens, Greece. I went for one fitting and within a few days the dress was finished as promised.  I paid for it and took it with me folded and wrapped in a package.  Back in my hotel room I set it in my suitcase where it stayed for several weeks until we came back to the States where I wore it for our first wedding on February 16th in Orange, Connecticut and our second wedding on February 22^nd, in Mexico City.

My Greek wedding dress - 1975

             Now my dress was once again folded and wrapped. I took it to the post office, purchased a box, gently laid the dress in it, and sent it to the Avenir Museum of Design and Merchandising in Ft. Collins, Colorado.  I felt a moment of nostalgia which quickly turned to a sense of relief as if I had just sent a well-loved child out into the world. 

 This was the third time in the last 8 years to send a beloved but mostly forgotten wedding dress to a museum.  The first was my Grandmother Blythe Cory’s 106-year old Victorian dress worn at her wedding on June 24^th, 1908. Blythe turned 24 on her wedding day when she married Harry Harlan Cory, a 28-year old red-haired dentist at her family’s Presbyterian church in Des Moines. 

Blythe Cory in her wedding dress - 1908

In September 2012, the Iowa Historical Society in Des Moines, Iowa was “pleased to accept it as a significant addition to their museum collection” along with “the bloomers, corset, and handkerchief” worn with it.  I received specific directions from the curator as to how to pack it and send it (no plastic wrap at all).  Along with the dress I sent photos of my grandmother wearing it and one of me wearing the same dress at her 50^th wedding celebration in Des Moines the summer I was 13 years old.  The dress fit me perfectly.  Mother was alive in 2012 and helped me put together details of her mother and father’s wedding.  My story “Grandma’s Wedding Dress,” was published in Good Old Days Magazine, May/June 2013 issue, and I earned $25.

Grandmother's 50th wedding anniversary party in Des Moines

A year later in 2013, my college friend, a retired museum director living in Ft. Collins, Colorado, suggested I might try offering Mother’s short wedding dress and story to the Avenir Museum of Design and Merchandising which is part of Colorado State University.  I sat with Mother taking notes as she told me who had made her dress.  She loved to retell the story of her unusual wedding ceremony in Santiago, Chile that was all in Spanish and which she didn't understand a word of.  All she knew was that she had waited nearly three years to get a passport to travel to Chile to marry Dad.  
 I photographed the short cocktail length simple pink dress and hat, wrote the story of “The Well-Travelled Wedding Dress” and was delighted when they accepted it for their collection.  Mother was thrilled to think that her simple dress that she had designed and was made by a local dressmaker in Des Moines was going to be in a museum.  I carefully wrapped the dress and the matching hat to go with it and sent it off in a box in August 2013.

Mother's wedding dress - 1944

In the spring of 2017, I learned that Mother’s dress had been chosen for a special exhibition at the Avenir Museum.  The exhibition was entitled “Tying the Knot – 150 Years of Historic Bridal Apparel at CU’s Avenir Museum.”  Mother’s dress was front and center of their main flyer advertising this 4 ½ month exhibition. My friend Terrie, took many photos and sent them to me once the exhibit opened to the public.  Sadly Mother had died in 2014 and did not live to see her dress on display in a museum. 

Avenir Museum Wedding Dress Exhibition in 2017

Since 2017 I have wondered what to do with my own wedding dress.  It, too has a unique story.  It was made in Athens, Greece and worn twice because Art and I had two weddings.  One was a Jewish wedding in Connecticut with all his family, and a week later we had a Unitarian wedding in Mexico City where my parents were living.  Our story was that we were leaving Asunción, Paraguay and the American School were we had been working.  We booked a trip to Europe, North Africa and Greece with our savings.  When we decided to marry we wanted it to be on the Italian ship that we would travel on to Naples. No wedding for us.   However when we called home to tell our parents, Art’s mother was devastated and insisted we had to come back and be married in Connecticut.  Mother was upset because she wanted to have a wedding for me – her only daughter (my brother had eloped).  Art and I agreed, but since we had already booked our trip we simply decided to take the honeymoon before the wedding.  That is how I had my dress made in Athens while we were traveling.

Now that it is January 2020 my dress is 45 years old and we are soon to celebrate our wedding anniversary in February.  Last weekend I wrote the story of my one-of-a-kind dress.  Once again,  I contacted the Curator I had corresponded with regarding Mother’s dress.  I sent photos and the story and asked if they would take my dress.  I was delighted when she responded that they would. I mailed it today with a sense of relief.  My ivory wool gown with the elaborate gold braid trim will not be tossed in a Goodwill bag.  Instead it will be cared for at a museum and hopefully enjoyed and appreciated by students and researchers and the public.

I owe all of this to my college friend, Terrie, who has devoted her retirement into making sure artifacts, letters, and much of what has been left to her by her ancestors, get placed in a museum, historical society, or university archives.  I once confessed to her that it never would have occurred to me to contact museums about my grandmother’s dress, much less my mother’s and mine.  Her reply was “How do you think that museums and historical societies get artifacts that represent some aspect of history?” 

I never realized our wedding dresses were such treasures.  But now that all three are placed in museums, it feels like I’ve sent three children out into the bigger world.  I like to imagine that our family wedding dresses - my grandmother's, my mother's, and mine - will create a lasting interest in those visiting the museums where they are now.

Behind the scenes at the Avenir Museum...

My dress arrived in Fort Collins.  I know this not only from USPS Tracking but because Terrie had been on the "lookout" for it.  She emailed me a week ago:

I was the only volunteer in the work room today so I visited separately with Megan and then Katie, the curator.  Megan told me that Katie is excited about your dress because it's Greek and they have few Greek items from the mid-20th century.  She will use it in classes.  And it will be one of the last wedding dresses that Megan accepts.....the staff and I all care deeply about your contribution...with gratitude.

Terrie accessioned my wedding dress...

Today I had more information about how my dress will be cared for at the museum.

After the photo was taken, I hung the dress on a padded hanger* and put it with other items waiting to go into a big freezer.  That kills any insect larvae that may be in donations - rare but necessary.  Then it will be vacuumed with a special museum vacuum and hung in a storage cabinet.  It will have its museum number sewn in both pieces (the dress and the vest) and then stored.  The paperwork and story of the dress go into your donation file to be consulted, if and when, it goes on exhibit.

*The padded hangers protect hanging garments but are very expensive.  Last semester the museum had to work study students making them on sergers.  We now have enough to last awhile. You asked if your dress would be cleaned...I doubt it.  Megan, the assistant curator, takes things as they come to the museum because the thinking is that cleaning can do more harm than good.