Encouraged by Bev's expert direction, we jumped into the project. First we took pictures of the dresses and wrote down any known facts about each wedding dress and the bride who wore it. Then the fun began. Each fact we had was a clue leading to more pieces of each wedding dress puzzle; the more we researched, the more pieces fell into place, and the more pieces we had the more we learned about the women who were married in these dresses. We looked up census records, visited cemeteries, talked to relatives, and read through old microfilm. We had a ball, and the more we learned about each dress and its bride and groom, the more each wedding couple came alive for us.

We received expert help from Charlotte Gordon who examined each dress and gave us the wonderful descriptions you will read here. We are eternally grateful to her for sharing her knowledge with us.

The dresses date from 1875 to 1917. They are beautifully preserved, but not often on display; therefore, we're pleased to present them to you in this digital form. If you're interested in seeing the dresses in person, we invite you to visit the "Cook House" museum in whenever it's open, usually on Sundays both in December and in the summer, from 1 to 4 p. m. The Ansel B. Cook Victorian Museum is located at 413 N. Milwaukee Avenue in Libertyville, Illinois.

In researching these dresses, we also found out quite a bit about wedding fashion and wedding customs of bygone days. Early wedding dresses were usually not white; in fact, they were quite colorful. The traditional white wedding dresses that we know now were not popularly adopted until after the turn of the century. A nineteenth century bridal poem illustrates this:

Married in white, you have chosen right,
Married in green, ashamed to be seen,
Married in gray, you will go far away,
Married in red, you will wish yourself dead,
Married in blue, your love will be true,
Married in yellow, ashamed of your fellow,
Married in brown, you will live in town,
Married in pink, your spirit will sink,
Married in black, you will wish yourself back.
-a traditional wedding rhyme of the 1800s

We welcome your comments and recollections, especially if you're from Libertyville and know anything about these couples. Most of all, we hope you'll enjoy looking at these vintage wedding dresses from the last century (and beyond), and meeting the men and women associated with them. We are proud to have such a gem of a collection in our hometown, and proud of the community they represent.