Maureen Jones' wedding dress

"I paid for my own wedding dress and I’d saved up for a long time to pay for it…. It’s a dress you wear once in a lifetime and you’re never likely to have anything as beautiful ever again."

Maureen Jones was from a generation of women who were becoming increasingly liberated from the Victorian and Edwardian notions of female domesticity. Her wedding dress was a statement of her financial independence.

This wedding dress was designed and made by Mrs A. C. Heaton for Maureen Jones, née Wardle. Maureen married Trevor Jones on the 6th June 1963 at St. Anne’s Church, Turton.

Maureen had a job that took her outside of Bolton and opened up new and exciting horizons for her. Working in the sales office for the airline Pan Am meant she was able to fly cheaply, jetting to exotic destinations on her holidays, an experience reserved mostly for the wealthy in the early 1960s.

  The job also paid unusually well allowing her to afford a wedding dress that matched the glamour of her job.

One of the features of this dress is that it was constructed using nine yards of Chantilly lace. Both the lace and organza were bought from Kendal Milne in Manchester.

Many brides seem to have had some prior relationship with Mrs Heaton before engaging her to make their wedding dress. In some ways this was perhaps almost unavoidable in a small town like Bolton where Heaton was recognised as the best dress maker available.

Maureen had first met Mrs Heaton when she had been a bridesmaid for her cousin Pat five or six years earlier. However, having her own wedding dress made was quite a different situation, and she recalled being a little intimidated by Heaton. She was “very business like”, but Maureen quickly grew to like her.

The influences for Maureen’s dress were American bridal magazines. Heaton translated Maureen’s ideas:

"At first she had a long sleeve, but I said I don’t like long sleeves…. She said, well really it’s not done to have your arms uncovered...."
 
Heaton’s solution was to make a pair of long mittens to be worn with the dress. The solution delighted Maureen.
It was such a new idea, and they had lovely little pearls around the top…. I’ve still got them.

It was a long slow change, but by the 1960s the idea that women might have careers was starting to become accepted. Maureen is an example of a woman who saw work as both fulfilling and self defining; an attitude that would be quite alien to many women from her mother’s generation.

It also meant she had her own money which gave her decision-making power over her wedding arrangements, particularly the expense of the dress.

The independence that work gave Maureen meant she could afford a dress that fulfilled her dreams. The nine yards of Chantilly lace alone equated to more than three weeks wages.

"I paid for my own wedding dress and I’d saved up for a long time to pay for it…. I have no idea what I paid. I know it was expensive, but I had saved up for it, and it was what I wanted and that was it. …It’s a dress you wear once in a lifetime and you’re never likely to have anything as beautiful ever again. This is why I’ve never sold it or got rid of it or let the children play with it…. It’s still there, it’s still very much – you know – I have a grand daughter who is ten. Maybe one day she might get married in it. I don’t know. That would be nice if she did."

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