Nellie's wedding gown

This is a photograph of my maternal great-great grandmother, Helen Yale Smith, when she was known as Nellie to her parents. I've been reading family letters for three years now, as I've been writing a book about her parents, Julie and Morris Smith. Those are all fresh flowers -- many orange blossoms -- in her hair and on her white satin and brocade dress, trimmed with tiers of lace. The blossoms behind her must have cast a great sweetness wafting as she passed.

Nellie was marrying into a much wealthier family, and her mother, Julie, did everything she could to dress her daughter in the opulence that was socially required -- without having to sell the family carriage to do so.

Nellie needed not only the bridal wear but also traveling and at-home clothes that would befit her new life. With Julie shopping as carefully as she could, and making the clothing at home, the wedding gown, veil, shoes and other outfits cost altogether about a thousand dollars, which would be around $32,000 today.

On May 5, 1878, Julie wrote to Morris:
"The usual allowance of dressmakers and seamstresses all the week has kept me on the alert. Nellie’s last dress is nearly completed, but it will take another week of hard work to do up the underclothes and finish all the last stitches. You see, I have tried to have everything done at home and it has been very hard work. I have worked all the while and had my head full besides. But the things are prettier and have cost less than if made out [by a dressmaker’s establishment in Hartford] or purchased in New York City."