This Bride Is the 11th in Her Family to Wear This 120-Year-Old Wedding Dress
If you’ve ever shopped for a wedding dress, be it your own or someone else’s, you’re no stranger to the stress of making sure the one you found is really the one. In fact, with any luck, it makes the search for that other important “one”–your spouse-to-be–seem easy by comparison. (We kid, sort of…).
That’s why we’re loving the story of bride-to-be Abigail Kingston, whose dress search was made easy by the fact that her family had a gown ready and waiting for her to don for her big day this October. The special Victorian-era dress they had for her was indeed a hand-me-down….times ten.
Yup, that’s right: Kingston will be the 11th woman in her family to rock the 120-year-old silk-satin, balloon-sleeved frock, which hasn’t been worn since 1991. It’s been passed down among the women in her family for generations–and was first worn by Kingston’s great-great-grandmother in 1895–bringing a whole lot of love and memories with it, not to mention plenty of elegance and style.
For 30-year-old Kingston, who hired a designer to restore the dress for its 2015 debut (a process that took nearly 200 hours!), it’s a sweet family heirloom that truly takes the old “something old, something borrowed” tradition to a whole new level.
