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.
