Most women have their wedding plans years in advance. And one of the most important elements of making a happy bride is to have a beautiful wedding dress.
This family similarly focused on their wedding dress, lucky for them, it had a special meaning behind it…
Phyllis Jo Raymond bought a beautiful wedding gown for her wedding which was held on May 9, 1953. She bought her wedding gown from a department store in Denver, Colorado. And she probably never dreamed of how the same wedding gown would be used by generations to come.
A few decades later, Raymond’s daughter Susan Kay Traver wore the dress on her wedding day as well. She did not wear the hoop skirt under the dress and also had the jacket altered so it would fit her shoulders.
Fast forward to a little over thirty years, it was time for Susan Kay Traver’s daughter to tie the knot!
In 2016, Julia Cain was getting ready to tie the knot. And when it came to her wedding dress, she decided perhaps she would follow in her mother’s footsteps and wear her grandmother’s original wedding dress.
Not only was she going to wear the same dress as her grandmother and mother, but she would be walking down the aisle with the same man as them, her grandfather Harold.
Learning about his granddaughter’s plans to wear his wife’s wedding dress made him ecstatic and he was more than on board with any changes to the dress the bride-to-be was planning. Her grandmother who had originally worn the dress had passed away earlier, making this a wonderful way to include her in the ceremony.
A dress over 50 years old, would definitely need to be updated and deep-cleaned before a bride could wear it!
Cain recalled the first time she had ever tried on the famed wedding dress, “When I first tried on the dress as a teenager, we never thought I would wear it for my wedding,” she said in an interview.
While Cain had been in college, her mother would often peddle the idea of her wearing her grandmother’s wedding dress to her own wedding, but at the time since she had no plans of getting married, she did not think much about it!
But once she got engaged, her mind veered back to her grandmother’s dress, and she decided she would wear it to her wedding. She told her mother her plans, and her mother brought the dress from St. Louis, Missouri, to Springfield, Illinois.
However, trying the dress on as an adult woman was a completely different experience for her. Cain said, “This time, the dress did not look flattering, and we started to worry.”
They decided to play around with the style, she removed the sleeves and deepened the neck but the dress still did not look like what they wanted. They were on the verge of giving up, but then the bride and mother of the bride had a brilliant idea; adding a higher waist. They decided to add a sash around the waist.
“By visually raising the waistline a little bit, the gown transformed into my dream dress!” Cain said.
They found a tailor who was able to make the alterations, and in the end, their dress turned out exactly how they had been dreaming. They waited to reveal the final look to the groom and the rest of the family on the wedding day itself.
However, the process was not exactly cheap. Cain said, “While still cheaper than many new dresses, altering a 60-year-old dress is not inexpensive, and it takes an understandably long time.”
She was incredibly happy with the final result and was glad she had such a meaningful story behind her dress. She said her grandfather was also very happy with her choosing her grandmother’s dress, saying, “Not only is it sentimental, but that man loves a discount.”
She walked down the aisle with her grandfather Harold who stepped in as Cain’s own father had passed away several years ago.
“I’m the first of the grandchildren to get married, so it was an emotional day for everyone,” Cain said about her wedding. She further went on to encourage other brides to wear family heirlooms for their weddings.
However, she was also quick to warn them about the extra effort they would still have to put in, on the cleaning and revamping of the dress itself. She warned other brides to make sure the dress could withstand a deep cleaning by a professional and also be able to bear some adjustments from a tailor as well.
However, she was all for wearing dresses other brides in the family wore before.