I see the lost 1870 wedding dress has been found!

[Merry]

All over the news today that a woman who married last year in her g-g-grandmother's wedding dress had lost it due to the failure of the dry cleaning business she entrusted it with after the event.

I'm only mentioning it here because my kids are fed up with me rambling on that she said her g-g-grandparents married in Edinburgh in 1870, but according to me (lol) they actually tied the knot in London in 1877! Does that matter? No, not particularly!

I will also stick my neck out and say the dress looks more 1920s than 1870s to me!

http://metro.co.uk/2017/02/11/bride-reunited-with-her-missing-147-year-old-wedding-dress-6442410/

[ElizabethHerts]

I saw that today. It does look rather sheer and see-through for the 1870s!
I'm so pleased she got it back.

[Olde Crone]

It doesn't look like a Victorian wedding dress to me either, more like a Victorian nightdress or even an underskirt, much altered. Victorian wedding dresses were modest affairs and hardly ever white, unless you were upper class. Still, it's very pretty.

OC

[Merry]

Well, I had been thinking they were a pretty well-to-do family - the 1877 wedding people were, but now I see the husband was supposed to be a hatmaker, which doesn't fit, so maybe they did marry in 1870 in Edinburgh after all! Jolly cold in that lace!!

[Merry]

OOoh, no, another article takes me back to the 1877 wedding again. How is a hat maker also a Lieutenant-Colonel??

[vita]

I'm really glad to see she got it back but is anyone else thinking it was a little foolish not

to take it to a specialist cleaner in the first place?

[Merry]

Yes, definitely foolish. Mainly because I would have thought using normal dry cleaning fluid on an antique garment would be pretty risky.

[vita]

Just read that great great grandmother made the dress herself so perhaps that's why it

doesn't look typical for the time.

[kiterunner]

Also, the current owner had the top altered for her wedding.

[Merry]

Yes, I saw that, but I still had difficulty with the idea of it being 1870 (or 1877!). Most brides want to be fashionable. The wedding was on 9th Oct, so I hope it wasn't too cold!

[Merry]

I had toyed with the idea the dress had belonged to the next generation, so worn in the 1920s, but that definitely isn't right as the bride in that case married twice, once with a photo in the paper (no lace in the skirt) and the second time not in a wedding dress at all, so it's not hers. I think I shall have to concede that the dress is indeed 1877 even though it doesn't look like it! lol

[Olde Crone]

I googled and finally found something vaguely similar in the 1870 s but not typical of 1870s dresses which mostly had bustles. The dress I found was made of diaphanous gauze and lace but was many layered and utterly concealing and respectable!

If this was genuinely made in the 1870s then it was worn by an unfashionable woman ( no bustle) and I suspect that only the top layer has been used in its modern incarnation.

OC

[Merry]

The idea of the top layer only being used for the recent wedding makes complete sense. If all that floaty lace were mounted on a sturdy fabric base with a bustle and a narrower waistline then it would all make sense.

See this photo:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/wedding-dress-woman-tess-newall-appeals-help-losing-family-generations-dry-cleaner-a7574561.html

You can see a triangle of fabric over her bottom and a gathered section at the bottom of that - I think this has been re-worked at the waist (into a bodice that looks like completely different fabric from this angle) and is where the bustle was originally.

I am happy now!! lol :D

[Olde Crone]

Hum! Why is she photographed wearing her own dress in what is apparently a bridal gown shop!

OC

[Merry]

Perhaps the bridal shop made the alterations to her dress?