Following bridal traditions
She sewed by lamplight. The delicate lawn material felt weightless in her hands.
It was 1910, and Martha Jurgensen had paid the extravagant sum of $1 per yard for fabric to make her wedding gown. She must have dreamed as she sewed – imagined her life with Otto Schranck, thought of the family they would raise. And after the wedding, when she lovingly packed the gown away, she must have hoped for a daughter to wear the dress someday.
Ninety-seven years later her daughter, Florence McDougall, wore that dress as she and her husband, Jack, celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary in Spokane Valley.
It wasn’t the first time McDougall had slipped the soft white gown over her head. She’d worn it for her own wedding and celebrated her 25th and 50th anniversaries in it. “It’s precious to me because my mother wore it,” McDougall said.
Over the years, the dress was altered only once. Originally, the waist measured 21 inches, which fit Martha Jurgensen perfectly on her wedding day. However, in 1936, when she prepared to wear it again to celebrate her 25th anniversary, she let the waist out to 29 inches and added a zipper.
The high-necked gown with a lace yoke and leg o’mutton sleeves is still snowy white. Fifteen tiny buttons fasten the dress in back. Long delicate lace inserts adorn the front. It took Jurgensen a year to make it. “Mom didn’t use a pattern. She just copied a picture from a pattern book.” McDougall still has the torn catalogue page from which her mother drew inspiration.
The care of the gown is a labor of love. McDougall washes it by hand and dries it on her clothesline. It takes her two hours to iron the translucent fabric.
McDougall’s daughter, Kathleen, became the third bride to wear the dress when she married 26 years ago. “I hope my granddaughter will wear it when she gets married,” she said with a smile.
The McDougalls aren’t the only family to have such a treasured heirloom. On May 17, Missy Carstens Wessman became the 12th family bride to wear an elegant lace veil purchased in Venice by her great-grandmother in 1913.
June Twohy was traveling in Europe with her sister, May, when she discovered the rose-point lace veil. She shipped it home to Spokane and wore it when she married John O’Shea in 1915. June’s four daughters all wore the cathedral-length veil, as did May’s only daughter. Soon other family brides included it in their wedding finery.
Photos show that wedding dress styles change over the years, but the classic, ivory veil looked perfect and elegant on every bride. Wessman’s aunt, Kim Storms, wore the veil at her wedding in 1989. And then for 19 long years the veil waited, packed away in a Crescent Department Store box.
In her South Hill home, Wessman’s mother, Bridget Carstens, showed the family treasure to guests. The three yards of exquisite lace is slightly scalloped along the edges. The descending rose-point pattern grows more intricate toward the bottom third of the lace. “It’s been through so many extraordinary and happy occasions,” Carstens said. “It gives me goosebumps.”
Wessman said she deliberately chose a very simple wedding gown. “I wanted the veil to speak for itself. My whole life I’ve hoped that I could be part of this history.”
She laughed when she recalled a cousin who served as a bridesmaid admonishing her to be careful with the veil. “She wants to wear it someday, too.”
Much has changed since the early 1900s when Martha Jurgensen stitched her wedding gown and June Twohy purchased her veil. Their descendants inhabit a disposable world filled with throwaway dishes, linens and cameras. And relationships often seem more fragile than antique lace or delicate hand-sewn lawn.
But for the Carstens and McDougall families these fabric pieces of the past bear witness to a time when marriages – like other beautiful things – were meant to last.