Future bride Abigail Kingston determined to wear the 120-year-old wedding dress, which was brown, torn, and too short for her figure when it was delivered to her hands from her aunt.
Handmade in New York City in 1895, this Victorian-era silk gown was first worn by Kingston’s great-great-grandmother, Mary Lowry of Buffalo, and then by next nine women in her family through generations.
Kingston has wanted to wear the dress ever since she was five years old after seeing it at her aunt Ogden’s wedding. Twenty-five years later, her nostalgic dream was going to come true when her boyfriend proposed to her.
But to her disappointment, she found that it was impossible for her to wear the torn, old wedding gown.
To realize her childhood dream and to keep her family tradition going, she decided to restore the dress to its original Victorian style, a task that took designer Deborah LoPresti 200 hours of painstaking work to accomplish.
“It was in rags . . . and when I had my final fitting, it really felt like I was Cinderella,” said Kingston.
