Vintage wedding gowns on display at Enchanted Wedding Expo

On display at Saratoga Today's Enchanted Wedding Expo are a handful of vintage wedding gowns worn by the who's who of Victorian Saratoga Springs. 

In the late 19th century and early 20th century, wedding dresses reflected the complex fashion of the times. Many dresses featured layers, lace and beadwork which were all created by hand. 

Michael Levinson of Hidden Gardens Events will bring the dresses to life at the Expo, creating still life scenes and accessorizing the dresses with appropriate extras such as parasols and handbags. 

"If I just take a form (mannequin) and put a dress on it, there is no life. The form is empty," Levinson said. "By creating a still life around the form it is brought to life along with the dress." 

By positioning a form in a life-like pose, one can see the dress as it would fit naturally on a woman. The placement of folds and accessories gives the dress a personality.

"It's two different things to see a dress on a hanger and a dress in a still life," he added. "It brings a whole new attitude to it." 

In olden days, brides who didn't have much money would buy a "wedding outfit" which would then become her "Sunday Best" outfit. There was no use in the late 1800's for a dress or outfit that would only be worn once. It was common to wear a wedding dress to more than one event and would often become the outfit that was worn to church on Sunday or to other social gatherings.

The Saratoga Springs History Museum located in the Canfield Casino in Congress Park has lent the dresses to the Enchanted Wedding Expo. The dresses have been worn by Mrs. John H. Linsley in 1877, Mrs. Cummings in 1096, Mrs. Carl Rodney Comstock in 1913 and Mrs. J. Scranton in 1895. While these women had very different wedding dresses, all of them had the elegance and fashion sense of Saratoga Springs at the turn of the century. 

"These dresses were worn by the upper or middle-upper class of Saratoga Springs in the Victorian age. What was happening with the middle class then is happening now--there really wasn't one," Levinson said. "This installation gives viewers a taste of 200 years of couture fashion in wedding dresses that were donated by the women who wore them or their families after they had died."

Around the turn of the century, wedding outfits weren't as much as "something old, something new," but more of something sentimental from a parent or grandparent, Levinson said. 

"A woman would wear her mother's pearls or grandmother's wedding bonnet," he said. 
At the absolute height of fashion in the early 1900's, women chose more simple dresses with natural patterns such as leaves or flowers. There were clean, linear lines more than there were huge sleeves, ruffles and layers as times changed. What added to the dress were the accessories.

"A woman of high stature would have a grand set of baroque pearls which, in that time, were more expensive than diamonds," Levinson said. 

The more wealthy women were more apt to take risky fashion steps with their wedding dresses as well, he added. 

"While their mothers didn't like it, the wealthy girls would show skin on their back or chests. It was slightly risqué, but young women liked to take that fashion step forward, especially for their wedding," Levinson said. "They were making a statement."