Family says 'yes to the dress' with generations making their own

Rather than the frills and extravagances of modern weddings on reality television, Margaret Hoffman's time walking down the aisle was a modest affair.


With World War II shifting to the Pacific theater, her sweetheart, Frank -- a Navy yeoman -- was home on a month's leave from England.

In the two years or so since they met, their courtship had been from afar, mostly in love letters sent back and forth across the ocean.

So when they officially decided to get married in July 1945, the planning was rushed. She had one week to prepare for her own wedding at the Little Brown Church in the Vale in Nashua.

And instead of going to the store to purchase a dress, as they had talked about getting married in letters, she spent the time working as a secretary for the Bureau of Aeronautics in Washington D.C., sewing and hand-embroidering her own.

It was something of a de facto family tradition, said her daughter, Francis.

Margaret's mother Ruth had also made her lace wedding dress for her 1916 wedding.

Again, their daughter Mary ended up making her own wedding dress and sewed the dress when her daughter eventually became a bride, said Margaret's daughter Francis.

Other brides making their own dresses is not entirely unusual.

An Oklahoma woman told ABC News this month that she spent $70 in materials and eight months to crochet her own wedding dress.

Hoffman swapped stories last week as a group of newly-married six staffers -- including five nurses -- from the IOOF Home & Community Therapy Center in Mason City where she now lives decided to parade for residents in their own wedding dresses.

Wedding party robbed at the Arch, "irreplaceable" dresses stolen

A family in town celebrating a wedding had items taken from their rental car Sunday including "irreplaceable" dresses worn at the wedding.



Mike Sweeney and Irene Wan were married in Forest Park this past Saturday and celebrated afterwards at a downtown venue celebrating their marriage and their city, they say.

Sunday, Irene's family from South Korea made a stop at the Arch on their way out of town around 12:30 in the afternoon. They parked near Pine Street and Memorial Drive, and when they returned to the car, they found nearly everything inside stolen.

Their luggage, passports, money, jewelry, electronics and five specially made gowns from South Korea were all gone.

They're very specific, and have a lot of cultural significance," says Irene fighting back tears. "And they might not get that back."

Mike and Irene are hoping someone will spot the gowns and help return them.


With the redesign of the Arch grounds the old parking garage is gone. The plan is to have people park in downtown and the group Downtown STL recommends lots and garages with the circular "P" signs. They say that's seal of approval for lighting and security.

Say “I do” to these gorgeous white wedding dresses

If you consider yourself traditional lady, you should probably envision wearing a white dress on your wedding day.


Whether you want a small, intimate ceremony on the beach, or a full-blown extravaganza, there is a dress -a white dress- out there for you that will make your big day as special as you are.


Need some inspiration for your wedding? Check out these 7 amazing white wedding dresses.

Top Designers for Plus Size Wedding Dresses

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Alfred Angelo offers every single one of his designer gowns in sizes 16-26 for absolutely no added charge. Making your decisions of wedding gowns endless! With a variety of different styles, every bride is sure to find her perfect gown at Alfred Angelo.
Not only does Sydney’s Closet offer plus size wedding dresses, but they also offer plus size bridesmaids gowns and Mother of the Bride dresses, helping to make your entire party happy! Sydney’s Closet also offers wedding gowns in sizes 16-38.

4 Awesome Mermaid Wedding Dresses

Mermaid wedding dresses have quickly become one of the fastest growing wedding gown trends of the past few years. This style offers an easy way to show off your silhouette in a timeless and elegant way. Here at BravoBride, we went ahead and did the dirty work for you and compiled a list of our top five favorite mermaid wedding dresses.

Duct tape prom dress pays off

Bekah Mecham has many great memories of her junior prom, especially after learning her dress won second place in a national contest.

“I heard about it my sophomore year and I was like, no way. I am not that person,” she said.
                
With pressure growing to earn scholarship money, she kept thinking about the “Stuck at Prom” contest, intended for those brave enough to make and wear duct tape attire to prom.

There was a big difference between making the dress and actually wearing it on prom night.

“I had to have my friends help me in the bathroom and get into it,” Mecham said. “It is very sweaty and stiff and uncomfortable.”

Burns and Mecham were among the top 10 finalists in the contest and finished second, earning a $5,000 college scholarship for each of them.

“I thought it would just be another form of art,” Mecham said. “And maybe I could get money for it.”

She talked her friend Wyatt Burns into the project and together they spent 175 hours creating a very unique dress and tux that didn’t cost a fortune.

“It was definitely under $75. We thought it would be a lot more, but we ended up using under 15 rolls of duct tape,” she said. “It was cheaper than most prom dresses.”

Why does fashion hate old people?

The reason people – women, mainly, if we’re honest here – get so especially upset by the fashion industry’s obsession with youth and skinniness is because it is echoing that dark, cruel voice that lives in the heads of so many of us, the one that encourages our own self-loathing. For all that people criticise fashion’s obsession with thinness, the fact is it is very rare to find any non-fashion magazine that doesn’t in some way validate this view, by using very slim models or running nonsense articles about “detoxing” and “clean eating”. What the fashion industry does, really, is exploit our own worst thoughts about ourselves. Look, fashion is a billion–dollar industry, and you don’t make a billion dollars by being stupid (although an obvious exception to that rule comes in the form of future US president Donald Trump.
               

You know, fashion gets a lot of grief from outsiders. Its fetishisation of skinniness, wealth, aesthetics, sexiness and, yes, youth, are all routinely used as sticks with which to beat it. Only last week Topshop was roundly mocked for using mannequins so skinny they barely made anatomical sense. And this is all perfectly to the right and well and good. Criticise away! Lord knows this column does it often enough.

But here’s the rather uncomfortable truth about fashion: all it actually does is take society’s own desires, own attitudes, and exaggerate them shamelessly. This is certainly not to excuse the fashion industry’s loopiness, stupidity and even occasional amorality. But it does explain why, despite the general consensus that fashion is demented, the industry is enormously successful. This also, I suspect, clarifies why people get so upset by it. If fashion items were sold on promises to make everyone, say, grow a third arm, no one would give a good god damn. Instead, they would look at the adverts featuring three-armed models brandishing wildly expensive handbags (an extra arm so you can carry more £1,500 bags – genius!), shrug, laugh and carry on with their day. They would not campaign against these adverts on social media and newspapers would not run long think pieces about how this three-armed fascism was corrupting the minds of our young.