The Year Of The Wedding

Preparations are underway at St. Mary’s Church in Storrington to celebrate this special year in style. A Festival of Wedding Dresses and Christening Gowns is planned to run from Friday to Sunday, 8th – 10th July. During this time the Church will be decorated as if for a very special wedding and there will be forty wedding dresses and more than twenty Christening robes on display.

The wedding dresses date from the 1930s up until the present time and clearly illustrate the changing fashions from simple bias-cut dresses of the 1930s to designer dresses of more recent years. Among them will be a mini dress worn in the 1960s and a Japanese wedding robe, believed to be more than 100 years old.

There will also be stories associated with the dresses ~ one bride travelled from the church to her reception on a steam traction engine, another met her husband on a Friday, got engaged on the Saturday and married the following week. One dress dates from 1948 and family and friends would have contributed clothing coupons to aid its purchase. At that time food was still rationed and only limited extra rations were allowed towards the food for the reception. Market gardeners were growing food rather than flowers and the bouquet was often replaced with a prayer book or Bible.

Many of the Christening robes on display are family heirlooms and some have been passed through many generations of one family. Some of these were stitched by hand and embroidered by women expecting their first child.

The Church will be open on Friday and Saturday, 8th and 9th July (10 a.m.-7 p.m.), and on Sunday, 10th July (10 a.m.- 4 p.m.), when there will be a service to celebrate marriage at 6 p.m.

On Friday and Saturday, 8th and 9th July a Craft Market will be held at the Old School opposite the Church from10 a.m. to 5 p.m. where refreshments will also be available.

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