The Wedding Album

Wedding hells. Wedding bills. The bride is radiant, the champagne is drunk, the doves are released, and the cake crumbles. Decades later, even after the love has faded, the children have relegated you to the pile of historical artefacts, and the only thing you’re looking forward to is his death or yours – you’ve still got your old wedding dress to remind you that at one point in life there was a joyous enough reason to celebrate and spend your parents’ fortunes on yards of white lace and promises. Or maybe it was the start of something great, a girlish dream fulfilled after a childhood spent playing Mr. and Mrs. Barbie and Ken with their GI Joe offspring, pre-puberty sketching out engagement party seating arrangements, teenhood devising wedding themes and assigning bridesmaids, and post-college years hunting for the right hapless male to fit into your lifelong preparations.

So you finally get your proposal, and plans are immediately underway to lose weight, search for the perfect couturier, reception hall, and wedding souvenirs – the latter of which there is an unwritten rule for absolute tackiness. "Tacky souvenir" is already a redundant phrase. The stuff my parents take home from weddings ought to be put in a museum of kitsch horrors. There are kissing ceramic doves, miniature religious frames, paperweights printed with a photo of the happy couple, Joy-of-Painting fridge magnets, petrified flower things, biographical CD ROMs, and holographic paper clips, all engraved with the date and names of the holy union and an exhortation of thanks, blessings and world peace.

When I get married I’m going to give out baby bottles of Cristal and packets of Curly Tops, nothing inconsumable, cringe-inducing or destined for the waste bin. Not that I’m planning my wedding or anything, but being a late bloomer I’ve only recently started mentally designing exotic floral centerpieces and picking out color schemes, so by the time the proposal comes along, I should be something like 28-30 and everything will be all planned out (potentially interferesome interlopers like parents notwithstanding). And oh, the wedding band will play a jazzy orchestral rendition of Metallica’s "Don’t Tread on Me" as I walk down the aisle, just in case he gets the wrong idea.

So what happens to the wedding dress after the wedding day? Being probably the most expensive dress a woman will ever wear to a single occasion, it’s quite a shame that the gown, symbol of immortal love, death-do-us-part unity and all that, should be thrown into a box, buried under six inches of dust in a ratty bodega, with wine and sweat stains coagulating into nasty colonies, and layers of curly chiffon crusting into a yellow wedding cake for termite couples to blissfully nibble on and propose toasts with. Sure, for the modern bride there now are ways of preservation (read: shrinkwrap), but for our mothers and their mothers before, their once glorious gowns are often left to rot in ignominy.

For this photo shoot I asked women who have gotten married in decades prior to the ’80s to dig up their wedding dresses to see how they have aged throughout the years – though not literally but style-wise. Many of them have witnessed the loss or demise of their gown: One woman’s Pitoy Moreno had been chopped up and reformulated as a First Communion dress, another’s was tragically terminated by attic-rustling insects, yet another’s 1958 Ramon Valera was donated to a convent for a novice nun to be wedded to Jesus in, apparently a tradition back then (hmm... free designer gown, invisible husband. Not a bad deal!) The six gowns presented here are those that survived, along with the marriages they sealed.

Rebecco Panlilio-Erlinda Enriquez, 1962

Linda’s dress, made by Casimiro Abad, is a heavy affair, made of appliqued corded lace in a traditional terno style with butterfly sleeves and matching pañuelo. The bouffant skirt, supported by innumerous layers of tulle and taffeta slips, never actually touches the wearer’s legs, swinging around them instead in breezy hoopla. Morning weddings were more common back then, and theirs was held at the dawning hour of 6:30 a.m. I wonder how their often-extreme hairdos held up under the air-con less conditions. Linda is the author of Why I Travel and other books, currently working on an insightful investigation into scorned wives and their philandering husbands (of which there are certainly many in this country). Modelled by Kathleen Sison-Roxas.

Ramon Maronilla-Rebecca Fong, 1967

Becky had already civilly wed her husband, and so her church wedding was merely a formality she didn’t really feel like going through and, thus, left entirely up to her mother. Her mother, not one to cut corners, came up with this beautiful long-sleeved Ramon Valera dress, with straight lines and embroidered brocade and a long shoulder train, elegantly austere and delicately pure. Now Becky’s was an example of extreme hairdo by the famed D’Fernando, resembling something more like modernist architectural sculpture than anything you’d do to your hair. A successful wife, mother and businesswoman, her gown is modelled by her 16-year-old daughter Mika Maronilla.

Raymond Moreno-Mary Rose De Leon, 1970

She was 21, he was 22. Gee did people marry young back then! Mary Rose or "Marrot", a busy church and civic activist, didn’t want anything traditional and so Christian Espiritu, an Inno Sotto mentor, whipped up this fun-tassle-tic creation, the love child between a fancy couch and a flirty curtain. Straight and stiff A-line cuts are still predominant, but the shorter sleeves and simpler set-ups are making way for the wave of the ’70s. Modelled by her 21-year-old daughter Tanya Moreno, who is about to do the graduation tour of Europe with college friends and has no plans of marriage.

Raul Garcia-Marirose Sison, 1978

Mari, a banking senior vice-president, had been together with Raul for 14 years before they got hitched, he courting her for many years before she finally relented, making him her first and only boyfriend. She flew to Switzerland specially to find the organza for her dress, which designer Malou Veloso turned into this ultra-feminine fairy tale concoction, all appliqued daisies and light-catching sweetness. The billowing skirt flounces on a fluffy cloud where cheeky cherubs scatter flowers and white chocolate. Modelled by her first-year law school daughter Trina Sison-Garcia.

Jose Campos-Erlynn Bernardez, 1977

Erlynn Bernardez, Bb. Pilipinas 1974, was part of the Karilagan models’ group through which she met the young Joe Salazar. This wedding dress, designed by him, is the free flowing and unstructured spirit of the ’70s – minimal detailing, light gauzy material, perfect for moonlight garden parties and disco lovin’. The belted cape and electro-pleated skirt infuse kinetic energy to the misty folds and unrestricted movements of this strappy gown. Erlynn says the best thing they did as newlyweds was to move to Cebu to start a life away from their parents. She is now a teaching leader for Bible Study Fellowship International. Modelled by her 22-year-old daughter Erin Campos, who is also going to Europe.

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It’s a nice day for a white wedding

It’s a nice day to start again...

So maybe one day I might find myself walking down the road with marital bliss-ters. I could only hope to end up as happy, fulfilled and still in love as these women who have been locked in wed for over a quarter of a century. As a parting shot, here I don my mother’s wedding dress, origin unknown or forgotten. Married in 1973, Ruth Nguyen was super-retro without realizing it – this empire cut gown is made of velvet and reminiscent of what medieval maidens, and then again 18th century Regency subjects would wear to be wed, except those brides never used to wear white (dry cleaning in those days, you know...) Well at least now I’ll have something to wear if ever a Renaissance Fair comes along... or a dark and shining knight.