The White Wedding Dress

Saturday found us rugged up to the nines (it gets cold up in the country, you know!) and driving up the highway to the fine and handsome town of Bendigo. The reason for our visit? To check out The White Wedding Dress exhibition that was being shown at the Bendigo Art Gallery.

If you have any interest in social or textile history then get your behind up to Bendigo and check it out! The wedding dresses, from the V&A Museum, span two hundred years, and countless social upheavals. Each dress reveals clues about the person who wore it: their social standing, their financial position, yet you can still see their own personal taste shining through the conventions of the day.

I found the entire exhibition fascinating, and could have stayed all day, drooling over the incredibly well preserved dresses. Alas, no cameras were allowed, so I can't show you any of the dresses here. I did make sure I bought the book, which is turning out to be an excellent read.

The craftsmanship that went into the making of the garments is worth the trip alone. The laces and hand beading are so fine and perfectly executed, both on the older dresses and the newer ones on display, like the J'Aton Couture, Gwendolynn Burkin and Toni Maticevski gowns. You can even check out the dresses worn by Dita Von Teese and Gwen Stefani on their wedding days (former: lush purple silk Vivienne Westwood, latter: John Galliano spray painted silk). No offense girls, but I still think my green silk dress wins, hands down!

Next year they are hosting a Grace Kelly exhibition. Wheeee! I'll be back!