Christine Connor's wedding dress

The meaning of an object is not static. By using things in different ways or in new contexts individuals are capable of novel interpretations, of defining new meanings for them.

Christine Shaw married David Connor on the 26th September 1964 at St. Margaret’s Church, Bolton. Christine was given little say regarding the style of the dress she was to wear.

She felt that her mother saw her wedding as an opportunity to design the dress that she never had the chance to choose for herself. Christine’s mother Nellie had been married during the Second World War and had worn a suit (although it had been made by Mrs Heaton).

The bride’s mother knew Heaton well, and had had a number of dresses made by her prior to this. Heaton was asked to sketch some designs, and Nellie agreed on the style without consulting her daughter in the process. As Christine commented:

“I didn’t have a lot to do with it – my mother did all the detailing. She paid for it, I just wore it.”

As a result, the wedding dress came to symbolise what was a difficult and at times unhappy relationship between daughter and mother, rather than the joy of getting married.

The dress itself is made of cream duchess satin material. It features three quarter length sleeves, with beaded detailing across the bodice, and had a long matching satin train. The bride also wore a fine, long veil and a small beaded headdress. Christine commented:

"It was quite a pretty dress….I think the wedding dress would have been what she wanted, because she was married in a suit [a wartime economy measure] – I think the fact that Mrs Heaton made her suit and then made my wedding dress resulted in it being the dress that she wanted but never got."

After the wedding, Christine kept the dress for a while, but then gave it to a local school drama club who needed costumes for their production of My Fair Lady. It was eventually returned by the school, stained and damaged.

"When I went to work at a local school I got very involved with the drama department, and they were doing a production of My Fair Lady. They wanted the Ascot scene to be all white and black, and they asked various members of staff if they had simple wedding dresses."

"As mine was a simple wedding dress, I gave it to the school. Then when the advert was put in the paper and my mother saw it, she asked what I’d done with my wedding dress. So I went back to the school and asked if it was still there – it was, so I asked for it to be returned. It was very dirty when I got it back, and I spent a whole day messing around with it to clean the make-up off it."

  The veil of the dress, however, was kept by the bride after the wedding. It was used to wrap Christine’s two sons in when they were both Christened. The veil is made of silk, and came to represent something new through its use as a Christening shawl. Her husband’s family had a white cotton Christening robe which had been passed down through generations.

However, there was nothing similar on Christine’s side of the family. By using the veil from her wedding dress to wrap the baby in she effectively created a family. Consequently the veil became more important to her than the dress, and although she gifted the dress to Bolton Museum, she would only loan the veil for the purpose of this exhibition.




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