Wedding Flower Fashions : Sepia Saturday

 

"A Weddmg on the Steps" is the title of this week's prompt photograph from Sepia Saturdyay. Who doesn't like a wedding?  so below are photographs from my family collection (1865-1971), with the focus on Fashion in Flowers.

1865

The oldest photograph in my family collection.  My cousin's  great grandmother was Isabel Edward of Banchory, Aberdeenshire, Scotland.  Her sister Jessie married William Dower and they are pictured here with their respective parents.  William   was appointed by the London Missionary Society as a Wesleyan Missionary in South Africa and he and his new wife Jesse sailed  there  shortly after their wedding.   In March 1870, William and Jesse set out on an ox wagon journey to East Griqualand and the town of  Kokstad, where he was asked to take on the role of pastor.  The original of this photograph is in the Kokstad Museum. 

Unless the bride came from a wealthy family, it was generally not the custom to  have a special dress for the wedding, but to wear  the finest outfit the bride owned.  Was the fact Jessie was marrying a Presbyterian minister a factor in the lack of ostentation - not even a small posy?  

 1910 

An elegant portrait of Sarah Alice Oldham on her wedding to George Butler in Blackpool, Lancashire  and what a showy outfit, magnificently decorated large hat, and a large posy set off by  long broad ribbons.     Sarah came from a family of carters and coal-men down three generations and George also worked in the business. 

1914

 

Another Oldham wedding, but this time in New Zealand as James William Oldham married Edith Keymer.  I do like the simple classic lines of Edith's dress, but bouquets were growing even longer  - here almost floor-length. 

James'  parents Alfred and Sarah Oldham emigrated to  New Zealand in 1906, where they i ran a wholesale tobacconists and stationery business on Karangahape Road,  Auckland.  Following James death the family moved to Sydney Australia where his descendants still live today. 

1918

The wedding of Florence Adelaide Mason to Charles Urstadt in New Jersey, USA.  

The bride  is wearing  such a distinctive  headdress that I wondered if it had any links to Charles' German background.  And again what a large beribboned  bouquet.

Florence (1898-1963)  was the eleventh  child of James Mason and Alice Rawcliffe - my great grandmother's sister.  They emigrated, with six children  from Fleetwood,   Lancashire to New York City  in 1888, where they had a further five children, before settling in Jamesburg, Middlesex, New Jersey. I am still in touch with Florence's descendants. 

1919

Beatrice Oldham (sister of Sarah in the second photograph)  married Jack Clarke in 1919 in Blackpool, Lancashire.   I feel the significance of the date after the First World War is not lost in this photograph where there is a air of informality (shorter skirt, trilby hat etc.), compared with the opulence of Sarah's dress above - and much more natural looking flowers.

 1928

"Gowned in delphinium blue" was the description of this dress worn by my  mother's cousin Annie Danson,  who married Harry Ditchfield in Poulton-le-Fylde, Lancashire with the local newspaper giving a fulsome account of the dress. "The sleeveless bodice being plain, while the circular skirt was side slashed and bordered all round with deep silver lace. Her hat was ruched georgette to tone and she wore silver shoes and hose to tone. Her bouquet was of pale pink chrysanthemums." A pity we don't have a colour photograph!

 

 1930

The wedding of my uncle Fred to Frances Green in Leicester in the English Midlands.  My father is the rather stern looking man on the far left, carrying the trilby (or panama?) hat, with,  I think,  his brother Charles behind him.  My grandmother is in the cloche hat next to the bridegroom and unfortunately I have been unable  to identify my grandfather - he could be the man hidden at the back. Fred's sister could well be one of the bridesmaids and I have no idea who the young boy is.  I presume the older couple on the right of the photograph are the bride's parents.   This is one of very few  photographs  I have of  the Weston family, prior to my parent's own marriage. 

 1931

The wedding of Albert Leslie Williams and Hilda Florence Coombs in London, the parents of my cousin's wife.  Blooms are all around with buttonholes for the men, and large showy bouquets for the adult  bridesmaids, to rival that  held by the bride.  

1931

 

The wedding of Henry Robinson and Florence Riddell in Blackpool Lancashir,  with Elsie Oldham (niece of Sarah and Beatrice above)  the second figure on the left - I presume as chief bridesmaid.   I feel rather sorrow for the girl on the right on  her own,looking rather spare - with a much smaller  bouquet, 
 

1938

A low key April wedding for my parents John Weston and Kathleen Danson  at St. Chad's Church, Poulton-le-Fylde, Lancashire. Flower wise, corsages were the order of the day, 

1941

Wartime simplicity was the look for the wedding of my uncle Bill Danson and his wife Louisa Cerone who I always knew as Auntie Lou, and  who had an Italian  background.

1942

A magnificent array of dresses and flowers  for the  wartime  wedding in New Jersey of Ruth A. Urtstadt  and Edward J. LInke -  the parents of my American third cousin Bonny - descendants from my Lancashire Rawcliffe family.  I doubt if you would see anything like this in Britain then,  when clothing was rationed. 

 1946

 A wintry austerity Britain in December 1946 when my uncle Charles Weston married his bride Vera.  I am the tiny shivering bridesmaid, dressed in dusky pink, and holding a big posy, surrounded by what I always thought was a doily more often seen on a cake plate.   Despite the weather this was  happy day, as Charles had returned home after being a Japanese P.O.W.

1948

 

Postwar simplicity for my aunt Peggy Danson and her husband Harold Constable, always known as Con. They met during the war when Peggy was working on the barrage balloons in Hull and emigrated after their wedding to Australia. 

And Finally:  

 1971

• My own wedding , with  yellow, cream and white  flowers for my small bouquet - those large style bunches of flowers were long out of fashion.
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