1985? Or 1895?
Being that I was fairly young in the 1980s, I love to make fun of the decade as a whole. Come on, high waisted, tapered leg pants? Giant hair? The off-the-shoulder flashdance look? When it came to wedding wear, many brides wanted that Princess Di, Victorian look. The ivory satin and antique lace gown above is, as stated, actually from the 1890s, but could, with slight modifications have fit right into the 1980s.
Of course, such a gown can come with complications, as Phyllis points out in her wacky wedding story:
The scene: Mid 1980s…..it was a sweltering July day in Connecticut, and I was dragged to this wedding by a co-worker who needed a date. There was ZERO air-conditioning in the church and it was easily over 100 degrees – plus it was a gigantic Catholic wedding with a full Mass – a 60 minute ceremony, easy….
In those days the height of bridal fashion was the pseudo-Victorian gown with a very high neck, leg o’ mutton sleeves and so much beaded Alencon lace that brides resembled piers coated with barnacles. The headpiece fashion of the time was a sort of Flashdance headband-halo thing that resembled those cages that spinal injury patients wear. Plus Big Hair. This bride was all of that.
So she comes down the aisle amidst 300 people fanning themselves with the wedding programs. Then she strides up to the alter, takes her grooms hand – and faints dead away.
She (naturally) spent most of the reception pissed off.
::cringes:: I’d tried to blank Flashdance off-one-shoulder tops and those halo headpieces out of my brain. Sigh. Guess I’ll never truly get them out of my nighmares.
I must admit to always being a bit of a sucker for a gown with Victorian influence. Still, this is an excellent cautionary tale of why you want to take weather and air conditioning/heating into account when choosing wedding attire…or a wedding date, if you’re really set on a particular look!
When Charles and Diana got married, I was the regular babysitter for a little boy of about seven. Like so many of us at the time, he watched the Great Event. When I asked him what he thought of it, he said ‘up close her dress looked okay, but from above she looked like a big, white slug’.
I agree that the tale is less about fashion faux pas than it is about one woman’s lack of foresight. I mean July…and the northeast can get wicked muggy and gross in the summer…you’re going to want a dress that’s somewhat more…minimal.
My aunt tells a story of going to a 70′s wedding where the bride had crocheted her entire dress. The entire dress, again, not just decorative edging or anything like that. It started to pour during their outdoor reception, and the dress got so soggy and heavy that it stretched out to about 3 sizes wider and 3x longer than it was when the whole shebang started out—like a big ol’ fishing net she’d just thrown on over a slip. (Tee-hee!)
now those are some wonderfully puffy sleeves…..
Unfortunately, the laws of Nature are no respectors of Wedding Princesses. Just because one has always dreamed of a June wedding does not mean that the weather in June will be any less miserable than it would be without a wedding planned, nor does true love mean that an unairconditioned church will be any more endurable. If one wishes to wear a garment consisting of many substantial layers, and HVAC is a thing unheard of by one’s church/temple/whatever, it is better to have the wedding in the late autumn (winter bringing its own challenges, such as guests unable to either arrive or, conversely, to leave).
That said, I happen to love the dress, having an 1890′s shape myself. And I’m all about the beaded Alencon; I love lace!
I never liked Princess Diana’s wedding dress — her sleeves looked like they were about to eat her head.
I have many memories of High Mass Weddings in Hot Humid New England Churches. My brother had one of those; his bride, wearing a relatively summer-friendly empire Priscilla of Boston late-60′s number (rather like this) tipped over in a faint not once, but twice. Luckily her mother was a registered nurse, and she rushed forward with poppers of smelling salts to revive her daughter. I, a chubby bridesmade, escaped with nothing worse than heat rash.