Bridal gown rescued

Family heirloom shines at Cary wedding

CARY -- Alyssa Alexander Farrell's wedding dress really shouldn't have made three trips down the aisle.

The odds were stacked against it. The dress had gone almost 98 years unpreserved. It was stained with age. The lace was ripped in several places. And it was too short.

But on Oct. 21, Farrell looked like a bride out of a long-forgotten era when she wore the restored high-neck, sheer batiste cotton and lace floor-length gown to marry Richard Farrell at St. Francis United Methodist Church.

"It was absolutely beautiful," says Farrell, 30, who is a marketing manager at SAS Institute. "Everything came together really, really well."

Farrell spent the summer working with her mother, Laura Alexander, and Cary seamstress Leigh Jones to repair the vintage dress. Her great-grandmother, Laura Mamie Griggs, wore it first to her wedding in 1909. Then Farrell's mother wore it to her wedding in 1973. The dress was nearly forgotten when Farrell got it out of a box after she became engaged.

While the dress was sentimental, it wasn't exactly practical for a modern-day wedding. Farrell wore the dress for the ceremony, but later changed into a new couture gown -- a strapless duchess satin dress by Ulla-Maija -- for the reception. "It was easier to dance in," she says.

Jones took the old dress to the reception, where she put it on a mannequin for the wedding guests to see, along with pictures of her great-grandmother and her mother wearing the dress.

Some of the extra lace taken from the dress during the restoration was used on Farrell's bouquet. She hopes to one day use the rest of the leftovers for a baptismal gown.

Farrell's not sure what will happen to the dress now. She has offered it to a recently engaged cousin, so it might make yet another trip down the aisle.

As for preserving it, Farrell is not in any rush.

"It stayed for 98 years without being preserved," she says. "I think it will be able to make it a little bit longer.