Well worn: The tale of one wedding gown, eight brides

By Casey Gillis
cgillis@newsadvance.com
(434) 385-5525

The wedding dress is yellowed with age.

It has long, delicate lace sleeves and a skirt with three layers.

When worn, it poufs out into the perfect princess gown — the kind most little girls dream of wearing one day.

But it isn’t just any old wedding dress. This gown is 50 years old and has been worn by eight different women on their wedding days.

“This is what a wedding gown should look like,” says Lynchburg resident Barbara Hamlett, the sixth woman to wear the dress.

And other than a few stains and a wrinkle here and there, it could probably be worn again today.

“It just looks exactly like it was the day I took it off,” says Carol Burgess of Altavista, the last woman to wear it in 1984.

The gown’s journey began in 1958 with three women: Nancy Crist and Doris Morris, best friends since first grade, and Doris’ older sister, Lois Coleman.Both Nancy and Lois were set to marry within months of each other. At the time, Nancy was working at a department store downtown when Lois came in looking for material to make her wedding gown.

“I said, ‘Lois, they have the most beautiful (wedding) dresses,’” recalls Nancy, who now lives in Rustburg. “We both looked at two or three dresses, and this was the perfect size.”

Nancy says it was the style of that time, with the long, lacy sleeves, full skirt and no train. It cost $59.95, with 20 percent off because Nancy worked in the store.

“Lois and I split it,” she says. “(I told her), ‘I don’t care if you get married in it first.’ That didn’t bother me at all.”

Lois walked down the aisle first on Oct. 25, 1958, and Nancy followed four months later on Feb. 14, 1959.

“We both just found a dress we loved,” says Lois, who lives in Lynchburg. “That was all we could afford. We had grown up together, and I had no qualms (about sharing).

“Never in our wildest dreams did we dream that that dress would go down the aisle so many times.”

At the time, Doris had no intention of being the next one to don the dress.

“I was in nursing school, and I wasn’t even thinking about getting married,” she says with a laugh.

Then she met Mac Morris, and on Feb. 16, 1962, three years after Nancy’s wedding, Doris got hitched.

She says she wore the gown for sentimental and practical reasons.

“My sister had worn it,” says Doris, now a Rustburg resident. Plus, “we got engaged Dec. 11. I didn’t have much time to get ready. Money was tight, and I fit into it.

“Back then, you just decided you were going to get married, and you got married. We didn’t have to plan this big reception. We just had cake and nuts and mints.”

After Doris’ wedding, Lois got custody of the dress again. It stayed put until March 6, 1965, when Virginia Stephens, who is related to Lois by marriage, wore it.

Her situation was similar to Doris’ in that she only had about six weeks to plan the nuptials, so it just made sense to wear something that was already in the family.

“We didn’t have any money,” says Virginia, who lives in Gladys. “We were broke. Everybody was broke back then. I slipped into it, and it was a little big for me.”

Next up was Nancy’s cousin, Goode resident Ella Pusey, who wore it for her Dec. 11, 1965, wedding, and, later, Barbara Hamlett, Virginia’s sister, on Dec. 16, 1968.

“(Weddings weren’t) a show then. It’s a show now,” Virginia says. “Then, it was a personal thing. It was a family thing. Like, my aunts made the cake. You did the best you could with what you could.”

Between each of its uses, the gown always went back to Lois for safekeeping, and over the years, she’s kept it in a bag she got at the dry-cleaners. She says they’ve considered having it sealed in a box, but just never got around to it.

It would be almost 20 years until the gown was worn again, when Lois’ daughter, Sandra Rolfes of Lynchburg, got married on Sept. 11, 1983.

“From the time she was big enough to see the dress, she dreamed of wearing it,” Lois says. “She always said it was a Cinderella dress.”

Because she was the shortest of the group, Sandra was the first to have it altered. Lois says a seamstress added an extra layer of crinoline, so the dress would fan out, making it shorter without having to trim the bottom. Sandra also had the sequins taken off the neckline and had them replaced with beads from one of her grandmother’s necklaces.

“She wanted to wear it because her mom wore it,” Doris says, adding that she wasn’t able to pass the gown down to any of her children.

“I had three boys, and I couldn’t get any one of them to wear it!”

Lois says seeing her daughter in it was a special moment.

“It was quite amazing to believe that she was wearing the dress that I wore, and that a dress would even hold up that long,” she says. “She was so pretty in it.”

Carol was the last to wear it at her wedding on Sept. 21, 1984. Like Sandra, it was the fulfillment of a longtime dream.

“Ever since I was a little girl, I always wanted to get married in it,” Carol says. “My mom had her (wedding) picture up in the den, and I always said, ‘I’m going to wear that dress.’”

When her turn came to walk down the aisle, Carol says the frock was even in style.

“It was very vintage, and that was coming back in the ’80s,” she says. “It’s like a princess gown.”

Today, the women say people are surprised to hear about the gown’s history.

“They can’t believe it,” Carol says. “Because most people, especially my friends, bought their dress, had it special-ordered and then put it away, never to touch it again.

“But ours has traveled.”