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| Abigail Kingston on her wedding day, in great great grandmother's 120 yr old wedding gown. |
When you first hear about this story, you think awww, this is such a nice tradition and "oh my" the ladies in this family are saving a ton of money on this wedding dress, just paying to have it cleaned and fluffed before they use it. But let me tell you, when I saw this story on Inside Edition I was floored!!! In the yahoo article, they left out some VERY important details. Hold on, let's start from the beginning, Abigail Kingston wanted to wear her Great-great-grandmother's wedding dress when she married her fiance, the same dress that her mother and 6 other relatives have worn since 1895 when Mary Lowry (great great grandmother) first wore the silk satin gown. The original gown was hand sewn and had a longer train puffier sleeves. Many of the brides have had the dress altered over the years. And unfortunately, only 1 of brides had the dress cleaned since 1895 so when Abigail received it, it was brown and in very bad shape. So she took it to Deborah LoPresti, a wedding gown restorer who spent 200 hrs cleaning and repairing the gown. So the gown ended up being tea length on Abigail with a very tiny train. As you can see from the picture below, the original gown was full length, with very puffy sleeves and a cathedral train.
The fact that the dress had to be completely redone and 200 man hours was used to do it, was the little fact that the original Yahoo article left out. So let's look at this logically, let's say that Deborah charges $25.00 per hour to restore a wedding dress. So that would be $5,000.00. But I bet you Deborah charges way more than that let's say, $45.00 per hour, so that would be $9,000.00. What a waste. It's a nice idea to wear great great grandmother's dress, but have the dress professionally cleaned and preserved, after each bride wears it. Silk can last for a very very long time, if you take care of it.I bet originally, this dress was bright white, and not the champagne or very beige color it is today. You have to wrap it in acid free paper after it is professionally cleaned of perfumes and body secretions. (Saliva and perspiration, etc.) Anyway, for $9,000.00 she could have purchased a brand new Pnina Tornai Custom ball gown from Kleinfeld's in NYC. Personally, I find the old dress really ugly and old fashioned. I think she looks a hot ass mess in that hideously wrinkled, puckering, and ill fitting dress. For 200 hrs of hand work, I expect a much better fit and a better looking dress. hahaha So, I hope Abigail is the LAST bride to wear this dress!!! And if not, hopefully, she has the dress professionally cleaned and preserved. That is JUST SO IMPORTANT!!!!!
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| Great great grandmother Mary Lowry on her wedding day in 1895. |
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