When I first started cleaning out our home two years ago, I realized that I still had a few items stored at my Mom's that I would need to figure out what to do with before we left Indiana. I sorted through a lot of them in the fall of 2021 and then again this past winter. I organized all of the items that our family wanted to keep in the closet in Meg's bedroom at my Mom's. Those included the Heinisch children's favorite toys, family pictures and even some things from my childhood.
Two of our family's heirlooms that I wasn't quite sure what to do with was mine and Jeanette's wedding dresses. It was nice that I still had them, but the boxes that they were housed in were huge. I decided to ask Meg what she thought about them. She wanted to keep both, at least until she got married, but after that, she wasn't sure what she wanted to do with them.
I asked several of my friends what they did with their dresses. Several had sold theirs and some still had theirs boxed up like mine. Mary and Cherie, however, had used their own dresses in their daughters weddings. The girls' didn't wear them, but had pieces of them incorporated into their big day. Mary's idea was a nice one. She took part of her dress and made a wrap for her daughters' bouquets. Meg and I definitely liked that idea, but the one that we really liked was from Cherie. She had her wedding dress made into a robe that Kayla could wear on the morning of her ceremony while she was getting ready for her big day. That seemed like such a nice way to repurpose a beloved, but useless article of clothing.
Cherie gave me her seamstress' phone number and soon the young woman was on her way to our home to meet with Meg and I. She wanted to get our ideas, see the dresses and get Meg's measurements. Meg and I took the dresses out of their preserved boxes before she arrived. We realized right away that we wouldn't be using Jeanette's dress. Although Meg loved the style of it, the dress had a stiff backing on it and had yellowed quite a bit. The seamstress told us that it would be very hard to take apart and that the appliques would not work for a robe. Meg was ok with that as she really only wanted to use my dress. The seamstress thought that mine would work perfectly and headed home with all of the information that she needed.
It only took a week or so for Meg's robe to be completed. It fit perfectly and looked absolutely wonderful. Meg not only planned on using it on her wedding day, but also during her "Say Yes to the Dress" event in November. I took the leftover scraps of my dress and put them in a bridal bag with Jeanette's dress. We planned to keep the dresses at my Mom's until we decided what to do with them next. They definitely took up a lot less space in the bag than they did in the two boxes. The best part for me besides seeing Meg's new robe was that I was able to show her my wedding hat. I had absolutely loved wearing it on my wedding day and couldn't wait to find a place to hang it on my bedroom wall in Florida.
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