A soon to be bride, Abigail Kingston, is warming up to wear a 120-year-old wedding dress worn by 10 other women in her family on their big days.
The ancient two-piece dress is a family heritage first worn by Kingston’s great-great-grandmother, Mary Lowry Warren in 1895. None of Warren’s daughters were interested in the large gown, so it was first re-worn by her granddaughter in the 1940s. Later, Kingston’s mother, Leslie, and aunts continued the rare tradition by getting married in the same dress.
“When I was younger, while I was playing piano at my parents’ house, there was a framed picture of the first six brides wearing the dress, so I would think and say, ‘Someday, I too would put on that dress on my wedding day’,” she said.
Leslie supported the idea as soon as Kingston signified interest in wearing the special dress on her big day. The gown which was last seen in 1991 before the two eventually tracked it to the mother of the last user who usually kept it safe as part of the family tradition, was still useable. But when the dress finally arrived their Pennsylvania, United States home, it was in a bit terrible state. The sleeves were disintegrating, the fabric was filled with holes and the satin had browned with age. It was also very short for Kingston.
The iconic family dress had been through several alterations over the last 12 decades even though it had only been dry-cleaned once in all these years.
But to get the special dress back in shape and well ahead of her wedding day, Kingston contacted Deborah LoPresti, a bridal designer, who spent 200 hours painstakingly restoring it to its original beauty. With the help of Gary Harper, a seasoned laundry man, the dress was brought back to life even though the sleeves had to go.
“We needed to replace the sleeves,” the bride to be told Lehigh Valley Live. “I was very sad about that fact. But the sleeves gave up their lives for a very important purpose: to save the rest of the dress.”
LoPresti combed through New York’s garment district for the right charmeuse silk satin to match the original color. She made new sleeves from this material – exact replicas of the sleeves on the original dress – down to the 80 hand sewn pleats on each sleeve. She then used the remnants of the old sleeves to patch holes throughout the gown.
After five dress fittings and six months of alterations, Kingston said slipping into the finished dress would be one of the most magnificent moments of her life.
“At that moment, I sure would feel like Cinderella,” she told Buzzfeed. “The sleeves were in rags and my fairy godmother made it back into this beautiful dress. I never imagined that I would ever put that dress on, and I know it is going to fit perfectly.”
Another soon-to- be-bride is already warming up to continue with the age-long and unique tradition, becoming the 12th in the process.
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