The Dress Dilemma

I didn’t wear a conventional wedding dress on the day I got married, so the question of what to do with it afterwards never arose. And I have no idea what my daughter plans for the ivory and gold number she wore on her wedding day.

It wouldn’t surprise me if she shortened it or dyed it black to get more wear out of it –she’s not usually sentimental about possessions. But I suppose she might wrap it in tissue paper and store it at the back of the wardrobe.

So what should you do with your wedding dress once the wedding is over? Give it to a charity shop? Sell it on ebay? Dig it out to raise money for charity on National Wedding Dress Day like the readers of Take a Break, some of whom are pictured above?

This week I read a news story about a wedding dress that had been passed down through four generations and worn by six different brides. That’s what I call recycling.

My mother was a war bride. I have no idea where she managed to lay her hands on a wedding dress or what happened to it afterwards. Sadly, she’s no longer here to ask. But she was so slim in the 1940s that, forty years later, I would never been able to squeeze into her gown even if she had mothballed it for me.