Christine Thomas' wedding dress

The dirt and grease stains are part of the story of this dress. Mrs. Heaton preferred to have a free hand when it came to the design of the bride and bridesmaids’ dresses. She accepted suggestions but expected to make the final decision. Challenging her was not something she tolerated well. 

Christine Boardman was married to Trevor Thomas on September 21st 1963 at St. Saviours Church, Deane. Christine worked at the electricity board office on the corner of Bark Street.

A lot of the women who worked at the office had Heaton make their wedding dresses for them.

As Margaret Park, one of Mrs. Heaton’s ex-staff explained:

"She used to like the Electricity girls. They were – well they were good payers… and they just used to nip in after … work. They were working class, and she used to like doing the girls, because they wouldn’t come in and say “I want this, I want that, I want the other”, they just used to give her a free hand a lot of them. She liked that. She was artistic, and she didn’t like being told what to do."

When Christine became engaged to Trevor Thomas in 1962, she also went to see Mrs. Heaton about her dress.

Christine met Mrs. Heaton to discuss ideas:

"I remember Mrs Heaton showing me pictures of other brides, and it was “oh, I like the back on that one” and “I like the detail on this one”…a bit of this one and a bit of that one put together."

  However, Christine had been warned that Heaton liked to take control. She recalled that another local dressmaker had said to her:

"Make sure you get what you want – she has a habit of trying to make people have what she wants rather than what they want, so just make sure you get what you want."

Christine made sure she stood her ground when it came to decision making. Heaton was used to getting her own way when it came to designing her dresses.

As a result, numerous disagreements and opposing opinions came between the two women. Christine, for example, wanted her bridesmaids’ dresses to be short, but Mrs Heaton wanted to make them long. Then there was the issue of the material Christine had chosen for the bridesmaids’ dresses – a vibrant, coloured silk with ribbed effect.

Mrs Heaton said that the girls in her workshop found this material difficult to work with, and that they could only work on them for short periods of time as it hurt their eyes.

  There were also disputes over the details of Christine’s wedding dress. As Christine explained:

"Some of the ribbon lace was made into flowers for the skirt of my dress, with little pearls in the middle, and when it was finished, I decided I’d like some of these pearls stitching around the neck and the edge of sleeves."

"She [Mrs Heaton] didn’t think it was necessary at all, but I did insist that I would really like these pearls on, so reluctantly she got one of the girls to stitch some of the pearls on. I don’t think she was too happy that I wanted this doing."

Wedding day snub

These disputes ended up affecting the women’s relationship right up until Christine’s wedding day. As Christine commented:

"She got her own back in a way. I asked her if she would come and dress me, like she did with a lot of the girls, and she said ‘no I can’t come, I’m at another wedding and the bride’s father is WM [Worshipful Master in Freemasons]’…She didn’t think that I’d know what she meant by WM, and quite frankly I just felt like I’d been cast aside."

"I felt at the time that she just didn’t want to know – she’d finished my dress, she’d done what I wanted, and she really didn’t want to know anymore. I was a little bit upset about that…. we didn’t really part on very good terms."

Without Mrs Heaton to arrange the skirt, it was difficult for Christine to keep the dress on the red carpet and off the ground. This caused the bottom of the dress to become stained and damaged. As Christine commented:

“It’s so dirty – it looks like I’ve swept the streets of Bolton with it!”