This wedding was of Gary and his bride. The wedding took
place in Hong Kong. The bride's 1984 wedding dress had a sweetheart bodice and a
semi sheer neckline filler with lace decoration, culminating in a small lace
stand neckline. The bodice style is very similar to that of the
wedding gown worn by Helen below.
You
may remember this bride from her wedding in
1953. Helen was widowed
after 20 years and was single again for 10 years before marrying her second
husband Max.
At her first wedding Helen wore a
beautiful grey satin cocktail dress or what some might think of as a prom
dress. 30 years later when she married
again at her 1984 wedding in America, Helen opted for the full white wedding
dress she
did not have the first time around
She wrote to me, 'My second wedding dress was dark ivory with a lace
bodice and featured a
chapel length train. It was made of a very fine almost sheer cotton type
material...'
The material Helen is probably describing might have been a cotton and Dacron
(polyester) mixed fibre fabric which was very popular for wedding wear in the 1970s and early
1980s. The fabric can be made to appear almost sheer and can
drape softly. The fabric mixture has the look of sheer cotton lawns,
but is lighter in weight and does not crease as badly as pure muslin type fabrics can.
The weddings on this page all show women wearing wedding
dresses with high or
stand collar necklines, although low necklines were also a look of the era.
The lower neckline was getting a little tired since the mass popularity of
the style after the wedding of
Princess Diana in 1981.
The first three brides wear
wedding dresses with a semi sheer lace
upper bodice. Mandarin and high stand collars were a popular wedding neckline
after the many square necklines of the 1970s.
Decorum was back in fashion especially in bridal wear.
'V' Yokes with extra flounces of chiffon, sometimes of several layers, had been fashionable since the mid 1970s. 10 years on the yokes had become curved.
Another
feature of 1980s wedding dresses was the big sleeves, which reached massive
puffed fullness. Big to elbow puffed sleeves were made popular after the wedding of Princess
Diana, although most of the brides (below) on this web page have chosen slimmer
sleeves than those shown in this typical dress pattern right of 1984/5.
All of the
1980's wedding dresses on this page feature lace and are high necked.
Another wedding of 1984, also in America, was sent to me by Shannon a relative
of this bride called Jill.
Jill's
dress looks a very typical wedding dress of 1984. The wedding dress
style and hairstyle show influences from the TV serial
Dynasty. The shoulders are widening and the bodice is rich
with decorative detail. The sleeves are slightly puffed at the head
and you can just make out some inner shoulder support for the extended
sleeve head. Such sleeves often had a been supportive net.
Jill's hair is very typical of the tumbling
hairstyles of the era and the contrasting short hair of the women sitting is
also very representative of 1980s hair with a slight punk lifted effect.
You can read more about the 1980s shoulders
in power dressing.
Finally, Paula wears a high necked Edwardian style wedding gown made from
antique silk and old lace from her mother's attic. The sleeves are
similar in style to that of the the wedding dress in the photo above.
The fussy features of frilling were very popular after the lead set by the
New Romantics and the resultant fancy
blouse fashions of the 1980s.
The little flower girls all wear yoked style dresses in poly cotton lawn.
Paula's great grandfather was Samuel Franklin Cody of Farnborough was famous for flying old planes. I recall her father, who gave her away, was the
spitting image of all the pictures you see of S.F. Cody. The silk used to make the
wedding dress was actually a
narrow bolt of old natural silk that might have once been from the same silk
batch used in one of S. F. Cody's flying experiments. It must have
been very high quality silk initially for his kite and flying experiments.
The silk was still good to sew with some 70 years after Samuel Cody's death.
The term 'cyberspace' is coined William Gibson's novel Neuromancer.
TV footage of the famine in Ethiopia shocks world as 6 million face brink of death.
Bob Geldof and Band Aid release 'Do They Know It's Christmas' for famine relief.
Apple Computer releases the Macintosh personal computer with now famous TV advert.
Reagan re-elected as USA president in landslide election
Portable compact disc player introduced and set to replace tapes
Chemical disaster in Bhopal, India, December 3rd.
Stonewashed jeans developed.
The AIDS virus recognised.
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In 1949 the George Orwell book called 1984 was published.
1984 is a book about an imaginary future where every aspect of life
including an individual’s thoughts is under totalitarian state controls.
The totalitarian state is known as Oceania with a dictator called Big
Brother. The story revolves around the thought police surveillance that Big
Brother operates within Oceania to stop people like the main character
Winston from having their own thoughts and non dictated lives.
Use of close circuit camera today recording our every move, the monitoring
of emails and the nanny state forbidding simple activities, is the modern
parallel with the concept of ‘Big Brother’ watching over our every move.
Old photos can be useful when tracing family members and narrowing down
search dates. These photo pages may help you put an era to your
undated images.
For more information about Wedding Photos click below:-
*
Old photos can be useful when tracing family members and narrowing down
search dates. These photo pages may help you put an era to your
undated images.
If you have old wedding photos please send them to me and if suitable I will
add them to this pictorial section of social history.
OLD WEDDING PHOTOS
For superb Victorian or Edwardian re-enactment costumes in USA, try the reproduction costume range at:
Fashion-Era.com looks at women's costume and fashion history and analyses the mood of an era. Changes in technology, leisure, work, cultural and moral values. Homelife and politics also
contribute to lifestyle trends, which in turn influence the clothes we wear. These are the changes that make any era of society special in relation to the study of the costume of a period.
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