The dress was passed from mother to daughter to granddaughter.

The dress was passed from mother to daughter to granddaughter.
KNIGHT RIDDER NEWSPAPERS
COLUMBIA, S.C. -- Modern brides want new wedding dresses. Clean, sleeveless lines are in, and vintage gowns are usually too puffy/fussy/yellowed for a second trip down the aisle.
But 22-year-old Elizabeth Mills decided that her mother Emily's dress -- with a few ingenious adjustments -- would work perfectly for her nuptials.
And, what's more unusual: Before the dress belonged to Emily, her mother wore it.
"I went into the store to buy a suit," remembers grandmother Martha Wherry, 76, widowed three years ago after 51 years of marriage.
That long-ago shopping day in 1952 was the beginning of a tri-generational tradition.
This is the story of how a 53-year-old gown was passed down from mother to daughter to granddaughter, updated and made wedding-ready.
Wherry, then 22, tried on the $55 postwar synthetic satin dress with long sleeves and lace, and she loved it. The wedding pictures show a beautiful brunette with a heart-shaped face beaming over the high neckline.
Thirty years later, Wherry's daughter Emily, then 19, brought the dress down from the attic. She left it in its original state for her own wedding, but bought a new veil and Juliet cap headpiece (still somewhat de rigeur in 1982).
Dresses up
As Elizabeth was growing up, she loved trying on The Dress and knew she wanted to wear it at her own wedding. But when that time came, she faced a few hurdles.
"It stopped fitting me when I was 12," Elizabeth said. "I couldn't get it over my head."
"She's built differently from the two of us," Wherry said. "We're taller and thinner. I always wished I had broad shoulders like she has."
Dress designer Jeanne Dudley Smith saw other problems -- not the least of which was that the dress looked like it had been around since the Truman administration, which it had.
"Dresses can get like a husband who's worn out and old -- the people who love him don't see him that way," she said.
In addition, she said, the color, style and material were wrong for Elizabeth.
"It was choking her neckline and mashing her bosom, and it made her look fat. She's not. It had gathers around the waist, which is the most unattractive thing a person can deal with unless they're 80 pounds," she said.
Old plus new
To remedy all this, Smith (who says that many young women rework vintage, family wedding gowns) found a floor-length base dress with a scoop neck and fitted, princess A-line tapering down to a full skirt. Then she set to work melding the old dress -- almost all of it -- with the new.
First, she cut off the neck and created a Renaissance-inspired collar, superimposing the original lace and beading over it.
She also took 12 inches of the old material and put it on the bottom of the new dress, blending old lace and new beading, then attached the train with new lace that almost exactly matched the old in shade and pattern (antique white is quite popular now).
The veil is Emily's, but the Juliet cap had to go.
"Elizabeth is wearing a headpiece of hand-shaped, hand-painted porcelain flowers, entwined with crystals and pearls," Smith said.
And the finishing touch: The re-invented dress now has the names and wedding dates of all three brides embroidered into it. And there's room for more.
The dress isn't the only thing that's changed over three generations -- so have the weddings and engagements. Emily dated her fianc & eacute; for three years, while Wherry met her husband four months before signing on for life.
Becomes production
And the vows have become more of a production.
"Back then, you just told the minister, went to the church, and got married, [whereas] Elizabeth's been working on this since October," Wherry said.
"In those days, your friends pitched in to help you. You didn't have a caterer or bridal showers, the way you do now. Elizabeth's shower was so pretty, I may have to get married all over again."
When Emily Mills said "I do," things were only a little more complex.
"It was right before everybody started having the big receptions," she said. "We had cake, punch and mints in the church fellowship hall, and that was about it."
The groom's role, however, remains the same.
"They still do nothing," Elizabeth said, making her mother and grandmother laugh. "Although mine did want to hold the [scanner] gun when we registered for gifts."