By Pauline Weston Thomas for Fashion-Era.com
- Jackie Kennedy Wedding Dress 1953
- Bride and Wedding Group 1953
- 1953 Facts and Events
Jackie Kennedy Wedding Dress 1953
Jacqueline Bouvier married John Fitzgerald Kennedy on 12 Septemeber 1953. She was 24, he 36.
They were married in Newport, Rhode Island. Jackie's wedding dress was a ball gown of ivory silk taffeta with a huge round skirt. The dress created by dressmaker Ann Lowe.
The wedding dress required 50 yards of ivory silk taffeta. Jackie had a portrait swathed neckline which she set off with a single strand of family pearls. The wedding gown took 2 months for Anne Lowe to complete.
The full bouffant skirt had interwoven tucking bands and tiny wax flowers. Her grandmotherís heirloom rose point lace veil was attached to her hair with orange blossoms amid a tiara of lace. The evening before the wedding she was given a diamond bracelet by John Kennedy and a diamond pin by the Kennedy parents
Jackie's 10 bridesmaids wore pink silk faille gowns with Tudor caps. Lee Bouvier Canfield (sister) was the matron-of-honor and the flower girl was Janet Auchincloss.
Other bridal attendants were Nancy Tuckerman, Martha Bartlett, Shirley Oakes, Aileen Travers, Sylvia Whitehouse, Ethel Skakel Kennedy, Jean Kennedy and Helen Spaulding.
Jackie Kennedy's bridal spray of 1953 was a bouquet of white and pink spray orchids with gardenias. The church was decorated with pink gladioli and white chrysanthemums. The Kennedy newly weds departed after a wedding lunch reception under a shower of paper-rose petals
Bride and Wedding Group 1953
The bride Helen is wearing a formal ballerina length grey satin evening dress in thick duchess satin. The dress follows the lines of stylish cocktail gowns of the day. The hat was black velvet with an ostrich feather. Whilst Helen wears a full skirted dress that shows off her waistline, her sister wears a slim sheath dress also popular at the same time.
Both women wear flower corsages on their shoulders. Helen appears to be wearing a fashion of today in her hair - a fascinator. Her sister appears to be wearing a small Juliet cap hat.
The two brothers wear lounge suits. These formal photos were taken after the wedding at a class reunion, but show the outfits worn at the wedding.
Helen was widowed after twenty years and remarried another 10 years after her first husband Norman above died. You can see her second 'white' wedding in 1984. (I have lost touch with Helen - please get in touch with Helen).
1953 Facts and Events
- Queen Elizabeth II crowned in June 1953.
- Mount Everest conquered by Hillary and Tensing.
- DNA the secret of life discovered by James Watson and Frances Crick.
- McCarthy witch hunt hearings took place in USA.
- A new regime took over in Russia when Stalin died.
- Dupont began commercial production of Dacron at a plant in North Carolina, to produce Dacron (polyester)
1954 Wedding Dress
14 January: Marilyn Monroe and Joe DiMaggio
Remember Paul Simon's song - Where have you gone Joe DiMaggio?
In the 1950s it was usual to have a wedding breakfast after the marriage ceremony. The bridal party and the ornate wedding cake are pictured below.
Dawn and Bryn Jenkins on their rainy 1954 wedding day.
1954 Bridesmaids
Below are the 4 bridesmaids photographed outside the church in June 1954. We wonder what kind of bridesmaids and wedding dresses will be popular in 50 years?
1954 Facts and Events
- The four minute mile is broken by Britain's Roger Bannister.
- July 3rd 1954 - Food rationing finally ended after 14 years since rationing began in 1940.
- First children receive Dr. Jonas Salk's polio vaccine.
- 54% (29 million) of American homes had television sets.
- Coco Chanel reopened her Paris fashion salon after a long closure.
- Nasser seized power in Egypt
- US segregation made illegal in USA.
- The US senate censures Joseph McCarthy for his communist witch-hunt.
- Davy Crockett caps become an international fashion fad with young folk.
- Bill Hayley recorded Rock around the Clock.
- French power and dominance in Vietnam ended when French forces were defeated at Dien Bien Phu.
1956 Wedding Dress
By Pauline Weston Thomas for Fashion-Era.com
- 1956 Wedding of Grace Kelly to Princes Rainier of Monaco
- The MGM Wedding Dress for Princess Grace
- An Everyday Wedding of 1956
- 1956 Ballerina Length Wedding Dress
- Cutting the Wedding Cake
- The Wedding Breakfast 1956
- Marriage and Divorce
The 1956 Wedding of Grace Kelly to Prince Rainier of Monaco
In 1956, the wedding of the year, which some regard as the wedding of the century, was that of film star Grace Kelly to Princes Rainier of Monaco.
The couple was officially wed in a civil ceremony on April 18, 1956. The next day they married publicly in an elaborate Catholic Mass in Monaco. During the ceremony they looked straight ahead, never looking at each other, just as senior church officials had directed them.
After the event, Princess Grace was said to have hated every minute of the public wedding, in particular being filmed under strong lighting. She much preferred the private ceremony with Prince Rainier the day before.
Prince Rainier immediately banned films showing in Monaco if they had Grace Kelly in the cast. Fiction was not to be blurred with fact. It is still against the law in Monaco to show films featuring Grace Kelly.
The MGM Wedding Dress for Princess Grace
Princess Grace's wedding dress was designed by Helen Rose, a wardrobe designer at MGM. The MGM wardrobe department made the wedding dress as a gift from MGM. At the time, film star Grace Kelly was tied to an MGM contract for another 7 years. To get out of her 7-year contract with MGM Grace Kelly had to agree to the wedding being filmed by MGM for worldwide distribution.
In later days she regretted the filming intruding on her wedding day.
The lace-decorated upper bodice and high neck of the wedding gown was a proper choice for an actress who could no longer have any doubt cast on her suitability as a royal bride and princess.
The wedding gown was made from antique Valenciennes rose point lace, twenty-five yards of silk taffeta and ninety-eight yards of tulle. Her veil was covered with appliquéd lace lovebirds and thousands of seed pearls.
Prince Rainier designed the Napoleonic-influenced dress uniform himself. After the wedding, the couple held a garden party for residents of Monaco.
I have been unable to find out what they ate as a reception meal, but I'm sure it was more elaborate than the wedding breakfast described below!
The wedding photo below shows the entourage of Maids of Honour and bridesmaids wearing their special dresses. I like to think of those bodices and full semi-sheer sleeves as in June Allyson's style.
Princess Grace did a great deal to bring the Grimaldi family into the limelight for Monaco, as did Princess Diana for the British House of Windsor 25 years later.
Sadly like Princess Diana who died in 1997, Princess Grace also died after a car accident in 1982. In both instances, we look on and see the makings of a fairytale when the reality for both princesses was quite different as they lived their lives in the public eye.
This page must not be published/used elsewhere -© Copyright www.fashion-era.com 2006
1950s Wedding Photos: An Everyday Wedding
1956 Ballerina Length Wedding Dress
By comparison with the Royal wedding above, this image is of an everyday wedding held a few months later in June 1956.
This family wedding photo depicts a church wedding of an aunt of mine called Gloria with her first husband.
Always interested in fashion, Gloria was hot on trend for 1956. This wedding dress mimics the very fashionable late 'new look' cocktail dress of the era.
The 'new look' lasted for many years after its late 1940s introduction. This fashionable shorter-length white wedding dress Gloria wore was made of tulle. This length of wedding dress was called ballerina length. Today we would regard a ballerina-length wedding dress as a good choice for a semi-formal or civil wedding. (You can see a typical ballerina-length vintage prom dress.)
Her very pretty wedding dress has shoestring straps, a decorative bra bodice, and a sheer bolero cover-up with long, slim-fitting sleeves. Modesty was still the norm in wedding dress choice and the little semi-sheer bolero was an essential cover-up for the church ceremony.
The short wedding veil is set atop a Juliet cap and the whole sits neatly on her hairstyle which has been treated with a permanent wave. Her hairstyle is a look-alike version of the short hairdos made fashionable in the 1950s by film stars such as Jane Wyman, Gina Lollobrigida, and Leslie Caron.
These wedding photos must not be published/used elsewhere - © Copyright www.fashion-era.com 2006
Cutting the Wedding Cake in the 1950s
In this picture right, you can just see June in the background wearing her bridesmaid dress, which was lemon and teamed with a lemon feather and rhinestone headdress.
You can also see the embroidered bow decorative detail of Gloria's veil as she and the groom cut the bottom layer of the wedding cake.
In the 1950s, wedding cakes were usually rich fruitcakes, covered in marzipan and royal icing.
The cakes were trimmed with silver trinkets such as silver shoes, silver leaves, horse shoes, silver dragees little flowers and hearts. Nowadays fresh flowers or sugarcraft moulded flowers are more usual as bridal cake decoration.
In the 1950s brides often kept a tier of the wedding cake for a first christening. This was done on the presumption that most brides would produce a first baby in the first year of marriage and good 'heavy' rich fruitcakes are known to keep a year or so.
Gloria kept one of her wedding cake tiers rather too long. Her first child was 2+ years when christened. When the revamped wedding cake renamed a christening cake was cut, parts of the cake were mouldy. Fortunately, Gloria had produced a backup decorated sponge cake. Relatives had expressed doubts about the original cake as the icing had yellowed, so the backup plan was activated!
A 1950s Wedding Breakfast
Food rationing had ended in 1952, but people were still mindful of the value of food. At Gloria's June wedding breakfast everyone had a full plate and it was considered a treat.
The wedding breakfast was probably like thousands of other post war wedding receptions of ordinary working folk and held up and down the country throughout the 1950s.
The wedding reception was held in a hired social club and the wedding breakfast was catered by Gloria's family. Every family member was invited including children so there were many guests.
The meal consisted of a plated-up full slice of boiled ham with a typical 1950s salad made of lettuce, spring onions, tomato, cucumber, beetroot, boiled egg all served with either creamed potato or new buttered potatoes and pickled chutneys. The dessert was an individual homemade cocktail fruit jelly and custard trifle, finally there was a piece of wedding cake and a sweet sherry toast.
All a long cry from the millennium menu of today, which might drip with artfully arranged international temptations from chardonnay, Greek style mezé, lobster delicacies, towering timbales, profiteroles and parfaits.
Gloria was 19 when she married, but later divorced and was remarried by the 1970s, she had greater success with her current second marriage.
Marriage and Divorce in the 1950s
This particular wedding was over 50 years ago. Unlike earlier eras many marriages that took place in the 1950s later ended in divorce and remarriage. Of course changes in the divorce laws along with legal aid, women becoming more independent and self-supporting, cohabitation and cultural attitudes, have all contributed to the change in the nation's marriage habits.
Marriage statistics are always a little behind. Because of the growing popularity of marriages taking place abroad at holiday destinations, the figures are also less accurate than they could be. In fifty years the age of first marriage for many women has increased substantially. The peak age for marriage continues to rise with 59% of all marriages being first marriages.
According to National Statistics, the average age of a United Kingdom single-status bride in 2002 was 28.7 years. That figure highlights the fact that the average single bride is now almost 10 years older than Gloria was in 1956. The average age of all brides (including those single, divorced and widowed) is now 32.6 years.
So often now people are tracing their family trees using old wedding photos. In view of these statistics and the number of second and third marriages you are all well advised to state the surnames of all parties on the back of photographs, so that future generations can trace family trees with ease.
I've lost count of the number of times site visitors have written to me to say they do not know who the people are in photos. Thus get out that tattered box of photos and those old albums and add some genealogical information to those old photos right now.
Page added 15 September 2006
These wedding photos must not be published or used elsewhere - © Copyright www.fashion-era.com 2000-2021.
1956s Ballerina Length Wedding Dresses
The bride is Vera's cousin Joan and she wore a fashionable ballerina length lace wedding dress. Vera is actually one of the bridesmaids above. The bridesmaids ballerina length dresses were pale blue with matching gloves and shoes.
Ballerina length dresses were all the rage in 1956 and Gloria also wore a ballerina-length dress here.
The 1956 wedding above was in Ramsgate UK.
The above picture of wedding dresses was taken later in the decade.
1956 Facts and Events
- The Suez Crisis. The Suez Canal was nationalized and control taken from Britain and France.
- Elvis Presley became an international, world acclaimed star with Love Me Tender film.
- IBM created the first hard disk drive.
- Prince Rainier III of Monaco married film star Grace Kelly.
- Velcro fastening introduced to public.
1958 Bride with Bridesmaids Wedding Dress
- Late 1950s Bride with Bridesmaids Wedding Group 1958
- Late 1950s Bride with Bridesmaids and Full Wedding Group 1958
- 1958 Old Wedding Photo - Outfits of Female Guests
- 1950s Mohair Stoles
- 1950s Matching Dress and Jackets
- Young Children in Barbara's 1958 Old Wedding Photo
- 1958 Facts and Events
This is a 1958 wedding picture of Barbara and her bridesmaids. Barbara was another cousin of Vera whose wedding is featured on the fashion era web site. The bride and bridesmaids all wear figured damask fabric dresses.
Note how the style of bride's bridal floral spray is moving away from the large fern dominated bouquets of previous years and is becoming more modern in style.
The bridal group wear satin shoes and no doubt they were Dylon fabric dyed to match and tone with the dresses.
It was customary in this era to team bare arms with long gloves.
Barbara later wrote to me that 'My bouquet was pink orchids and the bridesmaid's dresses were ice blue and you are correct in saying their shoes were dyed to match. The wedding was in August and in the following December I had my dress altered into an evening dress and wore it to my firm's Christmas Dinner at the Savoy, London.'
This latter point is interesting. In the last century many brides did buy their 'expensive' wedding dresses with an eye to altering them into evening dresses. In the Victorian era women often chose a grey dress as it was so suitable for years to come after the wedding. It is probably only in the last decade that women have become affluent enough to discard a wedding dress after one day of wearing.
Late 1950s Bride with Bridesmaids and Full Wedding Group 1958
Outfits of Female Guests at Barbara's Wedding 1958
The two images left are especially interesting from a fashion history point of view.
I have even wondered if these guests wear the same suit and wonder if that is why the second guest stands half-shaded by a bridesmaid.
The jackets are almost identical. Look closely at the cut of the collar. The figuring on the left picture is clearer. But I do faintly see figuring on the first fabric image.
I wonder if these guests bought the same ensemble - every woman's nightmare!
However, they do both look extremely smart. Fashion history is a continuous cycle, since there is only so much designers can do to the human body when designing clothes for a form that is much the same today as it was 2000 years ago. Waists are thicker today, but these two guests could quite easily slot into a wedding picture 50 years later.
(Later Barbara wrote to tell me 'The two "guests" you compare are, on the left of Brian (the groom's) mother, Nora Cole, and on the right my mother, Ellen Hibbit. On the day their suits did not look at all alike, but with hindsight I can see what you mean.')
1950s Mohair Stoles
The woman to the very far right of the photo below is also interesting.
One of the major mass looks of 1950s fashion history was the use of stoles in general and of an open weave brushed mohair stole in particular.
Brushed mohair stoles were worn in much the same way as a Pashmina has been used globally in the past 15 years.
1950s Matching Dress and Jackets
Two of the women far right also wear patterned suits. These were more likely to have been patterned, high lustre, sateen cotton dresses with matching jackets, than skirts and jacket suits. The dresses beneath would have been straight sheath dresses either sleeveless, cap sleeved or sundress straps.
The matching dress and jacket was one of the most versatile outfits in a woman's wardrobe and it performed a similar function to the trouser suits of today. When a 1950s woman wondered what to wear, she often wore a dress and matching jacket. You can just see the top of the matching dress at the neckline if you enlarge the photo.
1950s Hats and Bags
Bags varied in style from a traditional handbag to a simple clutch bag for events. In the very back of the right image above, you can see a child wearing a formal princess nanny style coat like this one here.
The small skull and Juliet caps that most women here wear are also representative of 1950s hat fashion history. In the 1950s women often wore hats not just to weddings, but also to any formal event such as a Sunday church service or a top job interview.
Young Children in Barbara's 1958 Old Wedding Photo
In fashion history we generally find that children's clothes do bear a similarity to adult dress. Sometimes they copy adult dress and lag behind, but sometimes they lead adult dress and we copy their styles.
These girls of 1958 wear full skirted dresses with gathers into a semi fitted bodice waist. The dresses are almost junior versions of women's clothes.
The centre girl is neatly accessorized. She carries her little handbag, wears a necklace and a hat. I wonder what she had in that bag.... perhaps Rowntree's Fruit Gums or Spangles and of course some confetti. I bet she is still passionate about 'it' bags today.
Her dress has some loose lace floral motifs applied to the top of the skirt. Three of the young girls are dressed in identical dresses, which makes me think they were possibly flower girls or the girls wanted to appear as if they were flower girls.
The children's dresses were most likely made from cotton or the fairly new polyamide fibre called bri-nylon, which was in its heyday in the 1950s for children's clothes.
A 1950s child could be put in a white or pastel nylon dress and brilliant white socks and a mother would know that however dirty the child became, the fabrics would wash and drip dry overnight. If she was lucky she would do that same washing in a twin tub washing machine.
Boys wore short trousers until they were about 11 or 12 when they went to secondary modern or grammar school.
1958 Facts and Events
- Famous wedding - Paul Newman married Joanne Woodward.
- Both Bill Gates and Madonna were born in 1958.
- The first experiments first began in an attempt to develop the modem.
- Paris fashion dictated shorter skirts above the knee.
- Yves St. Laurent introduced the Trapeze line.
- Last debutantes presented at Court in UK.
- USA annual family income reaches $5000.
- De Gaulle became President of France.
- NASA Founded.
- Stereo LP records first sold.
- Berlin Airlift.
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This page added 12 October 2006.
These wedding photos must not be published or used elsewhere - © Copyright www.fashion-era.com 2000-2023
