British’s woman’s wedding dress saved from dumpster 84 years later
A British woman’s wedding gown has been saved from a dumpster in Perth, over 14,000 kilometres away from where she tied the knot 84 years ago
After Gertrude Bloye married Fred McDonald in Plymouth in 1938, she boxed up her gown in a cardboard box from local department store Dingles.
As the couple didn’t have any children, their wedding treasures were passed down the family before being sent to a relative in Australia.
After all those years, it was discovered and rescued from a dumpster by a woman from Perth.
She then listed the box containing the gown and Gertude’s treasured heirlooms for sale online, for it to be quickly snapped up by Melbourne bride-to-be Claire Ransome.
Ms Ransome said she was looking for a vintage wedding dress when she came across the box for sale online, finding it contained the gown, flowers, and decorations from Gertrude and Fred’s wedding.
“It was like a vintage wedding showbag,” Ms Ransome said. “The gloves that her husband wore, dried roses, waxed buds from the wedding cake and then from the very bottom out came this beautiful wedding dress, like liquid silk.”
She then turned to Josephine Cafagna, a connoisseur of vintage clothes, for help.
After realising the value of the dress and the collection of treasures, Ms Cafagna decided to share it.
“What I normally do is restore them and sell them on to people who love vintage, but in this case, while people wanted to buy the wedding dress, I really didn’t want to separate these pieces,” she told the ABC.
“If they’ve been together for nearly a century, who am I to tear them apart and sell them off.
“It’s of historical value. It needs to go to a museum.”
So Ms Cafagna reached out to Peter Bottomley, who runs a cafe that also hosts his extensive collection of vintage wedding dresses in Castlemaine, Victoria.
“This lady preserved it for all those years,” Mr Bottomley said. “Seeing it back out of the dumpster and looking beautiful is a great end to the story.”
Image: BBC