Marriage in the Movies Exhibition

Good Morning

Well, I hope it is by the time you see this because I'm going to attempt to schedule this post and as I've never done this before it could all go pear-shaped on me.

I promised you something special and here it is. This gorgeous jewel encrusted bodice is part of a wedding dress exhibited by the National Museum of Costume, Shambellie House, New Abbey, last year. We are lucky to have this wonderful museum located practically on our doorstep here in Scotland, in a beautiful location near Dumfries.

Also near is the Sweetheart Abbey in New Abbey which seemed really appropriate the day DH and I took a trip to see the exhibition of wedding dresses entitled Marriage in the Movies. The lavish costumes had been worn by some of the best-known brides from TV and film, including Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park and Howards End.  The dresses were so beautiful they quite literally took my breath away - DH is often happy to attest to that, saying it's a first for me : )

One of these dresses was worn by Keira Knightley but I'm sorry to say I can't remember which. They were all truly stunning and the work that had gone into to making them just for the 'silver screen' was amazing. For example, the embroidery on this bodice:

And they all seemed to have such tiny wastes, though some of the feet were quite big - definitely 20th century size shoes!

Sadly the exhibition ended in October but there are other very interesting exhibits. Each room of the house portrays a different era. The clothes are depicted in authentic surroundings too. My favourite was the 1940s room - probably because it most reminded me of my childhood in the 1950s - clothes hadn't really altered that much and furniture, etc., certainly had not - it was the utility age, a time of 'make do and mend'..

Apparently this dress was made in 1942 by a lady from my home town, Edinburgh, from furnishing fabric because she was going to a wedding and had nothing to wear - sounds familiar even today. So it wasn't just Maria in the 'Sound of Music' who took to wearing curtains during the war : )

A lovely surprise was that in the grounds there is also a walled garden that has been rescued by an amazing woman who spends most of each day there with just her dog for company. The garden is absolutely beautiful. I took a ton of photographs and I intend incorporating some of them into a scrapbook page some day, much as I intend to do the same with the costume photographs. And, as I said earlier, the Sweetheart Abbey is nearby and I photographed that too so they should really go into a layout as well. Lots of projects to keep me going for quite some time.

It was a brilliant day and the trip was well worth doing and we can't wait for it to open again after the winter break. I hope you like these photos - I thought some of you might appreciate the embroidery work as it is so beautiful.

Now for the hard part - the scheduling :)

Bye for now
Elizabeth

Edit at 9.22am 22.1.11 - Well, my scheduling did not work - back to the drawing board I think!!!