Vintage Redux : There’s nothing I like better than giving a vintage piece a new life. Check out the story below to see how I revamped a wedding dress from 1967.

My moms wedding dress, which if memory serves, was kept lovingly in a heap in the basement of my childhood home. The wedding dress, worn often and with abandon in our childhood, for various activites like rollerskating, playing ping pong and many weddings to each other and our neighborhood friends, some how withstood the test of time and wear and tear of our childhood to become revamped for my sister Kristen’s wedding last year.

When Kristen took the dress to the dry cleaners to see if it could be resurrected and they asked how it had been preserved, “a garbage bag?” was the reply. Amazingly, the dress, with a proper dry cleaning was in immaculate condition (they don’t make them like they used to, I guess).

I flew home to Michigan for the meeting with the seamstress. We were driving, in a blizzard, to the tailor early one Saturday morning, when I asked her if she brought whatever she planned on wearing underneath the dress (Spanx, the right bra, hosiery..) and was met with a blank stare. Luckily, Target was open and on the way and they just happen to have a great and affordable line of foundation garments. https://www.target.com/c/slips-shapewear-intimates-women-s-clothing/-/N-5q0el

We took off the sleeves, shortened the hem and gave the dress an A-line shape and voila…the dress was given, yet another life as a proper wedding gown with a modern shape and length, while still maintaining some of it original detail!