When my parents got married, my Mum made her own wedding dress, with the help of her soon-to-be-step-mother-in-law, Helen. Mum was a tiny thing, all 6 stone and 5' nothing of her. When Rae was 10, she couldn't get into Mum's wedding dress. It was never going to be an issue for me, I probably outgrew it when I was 4.

About 10 years ago, Mum gave me her wedding dress to get cleaned and to put away for Heather to wear when she was older. That was always assuming that she would get married and want to wear it. And stay petite enough to fit it. When I took it to the cleaners, they wouldn't touch it in case the flocked material that the top layer is made from disintegrated in its 40 odd years of antiquity. They suggested instead that I wash it in the bath at home by soaking it in Napisan a few times and rinsing it out.

So that's what I did, and the dress came up pristine, undamaged and it excellent nick to wrap and pack and put aside for "one day".

I've been looking at Heather lately and thinking that she might have grown a bit too bulky to fit the dress, so today Reg and I went rummaging in Mum's glory box and retrieved the still sealed carton containing the dress, where it has been stored for most of the past decade. Then Heather put it on and I took some pictures of it. She's a little shorter in the trunk, a little smaller in the bust and a little heavier in the waist, but she fitted it well enough.

And this is what Heather looks like at 14, wearing the dress her Nanny wore 49 years ago.



Gorjus, huh