Houses dressed up for wedding season

Whether it’s the fashion aspect, feelings of nostalgia or the romance associated with the big day, people can’t seem to satisfy their fascination with weddings. According to Google, there are about 114,000,000 websites containing the term “wedding dress.”
The Livingston County Historical Society recently announced a special weddings theme would be on display in Pontiac at the Jones House at 314 E. Madison St., and the Catharine V. Yost Museum, 298 W. Water St.
The homes will display their wedding themes from 1 to 4 p.m. during Heritage Days on Saturday. Volunteers hope people visit the homes and learn a little bit about Livingston County culture through the clothing.
“We want people to like history,” Thompson said. “History isn’t just dates and politics. It’s about real people and how they lived their lives. I hope that people will look at these dresses and try to imagine how it might be to live in a different time.”
Almost every room in each house will feature wedding attire ranging in period and style from the 1800s to today. What has surprised the decorators — JoEllen Murphy for the Yost house and Brenda Thompson for the Jones House — is the amount of color in early dresses.
“People are amazed when I show them some of the wedding dresses because women at the time didn’t want to walk through a dusty town wearing white and they didn’t make a dress just to wear it once,” Thompson said. “It had to be practical because it was worn not only at church, but also a big parties or festivities, too.”
Another reason white wasn’t practical is because it was difficult to keep clean and the chemicals needed to attain pure white clothing weren’t around. An informational sheet near one of the Yost House dresses reads, “The white wedding dress did not really become expected until about 1800. Deep colors were popular with brides because they could be worn often after the wedding and were suitable for honeymoon destinations.” It goes on to say that gold, yellow and blue were symbols of fidelity at the time.
Both Murphy and Thompson agreed, what makes the dresses so interesting is how different they are. Murphy said this is the first time the wedding clothing has been put on display. When the Yost family left the house to the historical society, it left everything.

“They had three children and none of them married, so when the last one died the family willed the house to the city and left everything,” Murphy said. “Not all the clothing on display is from the Yost family. I tried to keep the older clothing downstairs and the newer examples upstairs. We have about seven or eight dresses to display, but we also have a bunch of flower girl dresses and men’s clothing, too.”