wedding dresses

My wedding dress (1972) was white chiffon with a high neck and long sleeves, trimmed with lace. I bought it from Rackhams in Birmingham and I think it cost me £30.00. My mother had died the previous year and it was me, my sister and a friend going shopping. My sister tried on a simple white dress and she (and I) liked it so much that she bought it and actually wore white as my bridesmaid.

I didn't want a 'proper' wedding dress so I wore a floaty creation from Rumak & Sample in London. Cream silk with four floaty organza panels scattered in sequins, long sleeves similarly scattered and the bodice made from a wide gold and silver ribbon with smaller ribbons hanging from each panel. It was rather like a fussy nightgown and, despite being 2x the size, I can still just about squeeze into it so long as I don't want to breath! It cost £45 which I suppose was quite a lot in 1973. I wore it once to a ball but since then it has been at the back of a wardrobe. What a difference between my off-the-peg dress and my 3 daughters' dresses all of which had to be fitted and tweaked to the 'enth degree, hung in fancy dust covers and steamed on the morning!

I really wanted a long pale blue velvet empire line dress with long sleeves with dark blue velvet ribbon under the bust line, Mum and I even went out and bought the pattern, but ex husband didn't like it! Like an idiot I let him talk me into buying a black and white Berketex mini dress, empire line with black velvet flowers on the bodice and cuffs. It was a lovely dress but not what I had originally wanted. I still have it tucked away in a drawer, but I know it won't fit me now, as I was a lot slimmer then. My daughter borrowed it years ago when she went to her sil's hen night, which was a 70's theme. She did look lovely in it.

It seems like a lot of us had similar styles, I got married the first time round in November 1969.

The dress I wore when I married current DH nearly 23 years ago was a lovely peach coloured creation which I chose with my dear Mum and I absolutely loved that dress which I still have in my wardrobe.

My dress got mildewy in the wardrobe; I did throw it in the bin one day but my [ex] husband got it out again..it eventually was thrown out. It makes me sad to think that, although he was the one who eventually left, the marriage must have meant a lot to him to have tried to save it [the dressI mean, not the marriage!].

Sorry jogginggirl no pics left. I burnt them all in fury when we divorced 18 years later. However, I remember showing one of them to a new friend about ten years after the wedding and after a minute or so of obviously searching for a tactful comment she murmured "Interesting outfit". Enough said I thought!!

Ooop.............I think I meant to refer jangly not sprinkles on the toilet ditty......... Sorry

In 1968, a very short white minidress with a white snood ( proper meaning of word, not footballers neck warmer) on my head. The dress cost £5.00 in a boutique in Reigate. I wore it to parties afterwards and at my son's christening in 1971, by the mid 1970s when my daughter was born it was a bit outdated so I gave it to either a jumble sale or a charity shop

Mine sounds very much like yours sprinkles. I got married in 1967 too and bought my dress from Pronuptia in Oxford Street. I loved the trumpet sleeves and I had a pill-box headdress with immensely long train. As I said in a previous post, I have since lost it somewhere. Never mind, I wouldn't have know what to do with it and the marriage didn't last either.

Oh my goodness lucid that made me cry..................nannym ..I'm just loving the picture....how cute you must have looked.........any pictures?
Sprinkles we have a 2-year old toilet training at the moment, I'll recite your ditty to her while we wait...........and wait............and wait............for a result

I wore a pale blue and cream mini dress with a cream long-line waistcoat, I wanted to wear brown high-heeled laced up shoes but my Mum wouldn't let me LOL the 2nd time I wore a beautiful heather coloured suit, maybe the 3rd (no chance)time I'll get to wear a "proper" wedding dress.......

I got married in 1973 and my mum and I made my dress from white broderie anglaise..it had lots of little buttons down the back, all of which had to be covered in material. I spent ages cutting out the shapes and then covering the buttons. The sleeves were very seventies big and gathered. When my DD got married in 1995 she wore my dress...altered to fit and with new long, fitted sleeves made from an old lace veil. Then we made a little dress for my first granddaughter to wear (had hoped it would be a christening dress but DD and D SiL didn't want her christened!) So 3 generations wore mine.

Oooh Sprinkles - that's lovely. Little love.

I wore a peach and white mini dress - peach skirt, whitel bodice, with a jacket in peach with huge white lapels (well it WAS 1971). I had a bonnet made completely of petals, don't know what I was thinking of!

@Jangly

LOL

My 5 year old grand-daughter chose that name while we were icing cup cakes..

I like your name sprinkles

if you sprinkle when you tinkle
be a sweetie and wipe the seatie

Sorry!

Mine was ivory empire line crepe with trumpet sleeves which was very popular in 1967. I designed the rosebud headdress and long guipure train which my sister later borrowed. I think it's still in the loft. I could never fit it now, it was size 6!

In the '70s I worked in Dubai and was married there but back then they didn't really cater too well for western weddings. I saw a picture of a wedding dress in a Harrods advertisement on the front of the Sunday Times and longed for this dress but it cost £800 which was a wee bit expensive. However, a good friend of mine could look at any picture of clothing and copy it so she made it for me in off-white swiss lawn(?) and lace and it cost me very little in comparison to the original. I still have it tucked away in a trunk and I look at it very occasionally and there are still bits of confetti caught in it and it brings back so many happy memories of that day. We didn't have any family there as they were all in the UK so it was just our friends and we're still in touch with some of them 30-odd years on.

My dress was silk organza and was made in Bond Street for me. The bodice and sleeves were not unlike Diana Spencer's dress, except mine was made in 1969! I had a hooped petticoat and a very long veil. It's packed into a box in my attic. My two daughters' wedding dresses have joined it over the years. They never seem to have room in their houses!

Reading about inaccurate predictions of how long pinkprincess's and janreb's marriages would last reminds me that the landlord of our then local pub – an Irishman with a love of betting – actually opened a book on how long ours would last. I only found out when he accused me of causing him to lose a lot of money when we had just passed our first wedding anniversary.

We were the same pinkprincess - no one gave us a hope in hell of the marriage lasting but it will be 40 years in a couple of weeks time.
I'm not sure what happened to my dress, one of the bridesmaids (husbands sister) put hers in the bin after she got changed. (She'd helped to choose the material and style so it wasn't that she hated it - just hated me!!!) Mum retrieved it and gave it to a neighbour for her daughter to get married in.

First wedding (1978) was a long silk dress in two shades of cream, trimmed with antique lace in a style reminiscent of fashions in the years just preceding World War I. It was a one-off designer dress not specifically intended as a wedding dress. It is hanging in my wardrobe and still fits me although I have worn it only once since at a fancy dress party when we had to dress up as royals (Queen Alexandra). I wore a cream coloured straw hat decorated with roses because my mother and future mother-in-law thought I should. It looked like a pavlova. For my second wedding (1998) I wore a knee-length, slim-fitting, short-sleeved peach coloured dress that my daughter and I had rushed out to buy 15 minutes before the shops shut the evening before. I still have that and wear it from time to time.

can't

jangly I keep trying to remember where I bought it.....it was a big department store in Harrow, but I just can remember the name of the shop.

Notso, mine was white brocade with full skirt and long sleeves that finished in points over the hands! 1966.

Couldn't post it before as I couldn't remember the word for the material.

First outfit for register office wedding in 1970 was a cream 'A line' dress with matching coat that had a little gold chain fastener across the front. Worn with big brown floppy hat. For our !986 church wedding (silver wedding this year), I wore a very simple cream Edwardian style wedding dress with matching hat and veil. It cost £99.99 and is still the most expensive dress I've ever bought.