By Pauline Weston Thomas for Fashion-Era.com
Mid 1980s Wedding Dresses Photos of Real People at 1984 Wedding
- Gary and His Bride
- Helen's 1984 White Wedding Dress Second Time Around
- Typical 1984 Wedding Dress Pattern
- Dynasty Influence
- Paula Cody
- Other Memorable Events of 1984
- Celebrity Weddings of the Year - 1984
- Mother of the Bride Outfits
Gary and His Bride - 1980s Wedding Dress
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.
Helen's 1984 White Wedding Dress Second Time Around
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.
These 1980's wedding dress photos must not be published/used elsewhere - © Copyright www.fashion-era.com 2023
Typical 1984 Wedding Dress Pattern
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.
Dynasty Influence
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.
Paula Cody - 1984 Wedding Dress
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 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 lawns.
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.
Celebrity Weddings of the Year - 1984
- Elton John married Renate Blauel in 1984.
Other Memorable Events of 1984
- 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.
1984 - The Book by George Orwell
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 control.
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.
Page added 20 October 2006
These wedding photos must not be published or used elsewhere - © Copyright www.fashion-era.com 2000-2023.
