Calling Miss Marple. Or maybe Miss Havisham; police in Hampshire have issued an appeal for the owner of a wedding dress that was found at the side of a busy road.
Officers who were clearing debris from the southbound carriageway of the A3 motorway near Waterlooville, discovered the gown, in what appeared to be a memento box.
Poignant? Yes. Unless she tossed it out of the window after gleefully receiving her Decree Absolute.
Or did the daughter do it? Having been pressured into agreeing to wear her mother’s gown, could it be that she took one look at the frumpy neckline, the frou-frou flounces and decided, in the interests of diplomacy, to “disappear it” instead?
So many questions. Can there be a matron, a bride, a trepidatious groom in the land not on tenterhooks?
Meanwhile, the lost propriety awaits collection at lost property. We need to know. We yearn for closure; if the owner would just step forward, we promise not to give her a dressing down.
After all, who among us can say, hand on heart, that our own marital meringues are preserved for posterity like, say, that of the Princess of Wales? Or that our bespoke morning dress is freshly laundered and folded into a monogrammed cedar chest?
Still not sure what to do? Take inspiration from our Telegraph writers on how they managed the afterlife of their spousal splendour.
‘My son ruined my morning suit partying in a foam tank’
‘Around the time I was married, there was a splurge of other weddings and I got quite a bit of use out of my morning suit. This was an item of clothing I associated entirely with fun and cavorting, the attire of young adult excess. Those were good times in the tails.
Then one day, about 30 years ago, I hung it up in the wardrobe and forgot all about it, as I headed rapidly through stolid middle age and out the other side.
Until, some two decades on, my son asked me if I had a formal coat he could borrow for his college ball. Reminded, I took it from the wardrobe and thought I’d try it on. Astonishingly it still fitted, albeit rather snugly, round the midriff. I told him the condition of borrowing it was to return it vaguely intact.
Then last year, I was reporting from Royal Ascot, where full morning regalia is required. So I dug the suit out once again. Regrettably, I discovered that there had been an infestation of moths in the interim and the trousers now resembled a sieve. Meanwhile the jacket, while still serviceable, was covered in a chalky white dust, the detritus, I assumed, of a moth banquet. I took it to the dry cleaners and explained the issue.
The man at the shop took one look at it and shook his head. “That’s not moth damage, Sir,” he said. “That’s mould.” My son, it turned out, had fulfilled his side of the bargain and returned the suit to my wardrobe.
But he had done so when it was still damp, the result of getting a little over-excited in the foam tank at his university event. Which was news that filled me with more than a tinge of nostalgia, a memory of the time when the jacket was last the costume of unrestricted excess. I only wished I had two of them and could have joined him rollicking in the foam.’
Jim White
‘My designer dress has clocked up 17,000 miles travelling the world with me’
I spotted my Marchesa wedding dress on the supermodel Petra Nemcova at an Oscars’ party and begged Georgina Chapman, the designer, and Harvey Weinstein’s ex-wife, to allow me to wear it for my wedding. She was unbelievably generous and gave it to me; her gowns are usually “price on request” and rumoured to start at about £2,500. The movie star Blake Lively, indeed, chose a Marchesa gown for her wedding to Ryan Reynolds in 2012.
My wedding was a laid back affair in the Cotswolds, so the dress required lots of fabric added to the cleavage area better suited for supermodels. Since then it has become my constant travelling companion, having flown 17,148 miles in its life from NYC, to the Cotswolds, and then to various homes in California, Kentucky and Texas, and now, finally back to England. To Canterbury most precisely, where I hope my daughter will one day saunter through an English country garden in it, as I did.
I should mention the Marchesa dress was for my second marriage. The dress from my first was used for a prop in an amateur photography class I did, wandering through mud, as a comment on mistakes made in starter marriages. No photos or fabric remains of that one.
Sarah Ivens
‘Gripped with rage, I set fire to my £450 dress’
Every so often, my 21-year-old daughter wonders aloud where my wedding dress might be, and if she might fit into it? This is because she is a slim slip of a girl, as indeed was I when I tied the knot in the year 2000.
I married my husband in Saint Lucia in the shadow of two volcanic spires, the Pitons, and it was glorious. The ceremony took place in November and I’d left everything so late the shops were full of winter clothes. I couldn’t find a dress for love nor money.
I decided to have one made and found some absolutely exquisite brocade fabric, embroidered with roses. A local tailor agreed and I dimly recall the cost being £450 all-in.
Pictures attest to me being as beautiful a bride as any other and my husband’s eyes welled up with tears when he first saw me.
I kept it in pristine condition, of course I did. Until I burned it on the gas hob. No, not accidentally. Deliberately.
Hand on heart, I have no memory as to when – maybe 17 years ago? – or why. But what I can say in my defence, is that being married isn’t easy. Men, annoyingly, don’t listen and sometimes you are gripped by such rage, that the obvious thing to do is fetch down your wedding dress - and set fire to it. In front of your horrified husband.
Point made, flames extinguished, I took the singed remains back upstairs and popped them into the carry-bag. They are still up there.
I occasionally tell myself I might have a look to see if any part of the frock is salvageable, but I never will; frankly it’s enough that the marriage was.
Judith Woods
‘I loved my wife’s burnt orange going-away ensemble so much – I daren’t even open its storage box’
We married 54 years ago when I was a trainee reporter on the Liverpool Echo. Keen though I was to marry, I had not spent much time delving into the intricacies of wedding customs. Our engagement ring was made from a sapphire and diamond broach my mother happened to have. My top hat and hired suit were loaned from a tailor. It never crossed my mind that it could have been purchased. What possible use would I have for it once the wedding was over?
I was much more interested in Mary’s going-away outfit, a coat with a mini-skirt which the local paper in Lancashire described as a “burnt-orange ensemble”. For our honeymoon, we could only afford a two-day trip to Paris by ferry and train, but, my goodness, Mary looked wonderful.
A few days ago my wife revealed that she had kept a few treasures in a box in our attic. Along with her white wedding dress, bought in Liverpool for £29, is the grey dress her mother wore for her wartime wedding in 1940. The burnt-orange ensemble is also there. But call me an old softie, I haven’t taken a look at it. I could not bear to be disappointed.
John Sergeant
‘British Airways lost my wedding party’s waistcoats’
The waistcoat I chose for my wedding was to confirm to my bride that she was getting a catch: Hugh Grant in Four Weddings And A Funeral, if you will, and a man who even had floppy hair - at the time. So convinced was I that the silk paisley item with a hallucinogenic spiral pattern was a winner, that I bought five more: for the best man and my four ushers.
The day before the ceremony in Scotland, the six of us flew to Edinburgh, the waistcoats packed in a separate suitcase. Will it surprise you, gentle reader, to learn that the waistcoat suitcase did not arrive at the same time: vanished, gone, totally absent.
And so six men scrambled along the Royal Mile in search of waistcoats to complete our morning suit attire. Only one shop had six identical waistcoats. And they were pink, undeniably and boldly pink. Not our first choice, but our only choice.
We wore them and they were greatly admired. On reflection they were much more attractive than my paisley choice - wherever they ended up. So thank you, British Airways.
Danny Danziger
‘The top half was perfect as part of my costume for a Narnia-themed ball’
I purchased my wedding dress in an end of season sale for £650, reduced from £3,000. It was a sample size, so no complicated made-to-measure required, just a bit of adjusting here and there. I made a homemade veil out of a bit of tulle from Peter Jones to go with it. It was in two parts: a full silk skirt with a sleeveless, collared top half that buttoned on to the skirt and all tied together with a big silk bow. I felt like a princess in it.
After our wedding, my mum had it cleaned and boxed up, and I entertained vague notions of turning the skirt into a christening gown, or keeping the whole thing for my daughters to wear (in the end I had three sons, so that’s probably a non-starter, although these days you never know).
It sat in a wardrobe at my parents’ house until, a few years ago, I helped organise a Narnian-themed charity ball. Teamed with a slinky white skirt, the top half of my wedding dress did an excellent job of transforming me into Jadis, Queen of Narnia/the White Witch, despite being distinctly tighter than it had been a decade earlier.
I still entertain notions of someone in the next generation wearing my dress - my niece, perhaps - although as the only girl among seven grandchildren she’ll have three dresses to take her pick from. In the meantime it’ll carry on sitting in its box, ready for the next dressing up party.
Lucy Denyer
‘My third wife upcycled the waistcoat from my first wedding in time for this year’s Ascot’
Having been married three times, a certain amount of recycling and discarding of wedding kit is not only inevitable but essential. Whilst you really have to be brave, as a bride, to wear a former wedding dress on a second outing, divorced men have no sartorial stigma about re-wearing the same basic kit. The key thing, I recall once being told by fellow divorcee historian Andrew Roberts, is not to be tempted into recycling your Best Man.
I still have my first wife Ilaria’s meringue wedding gown in the mediaeval attic of my Shropshire house (still happily protected from 20 years of bat droppings by vacuum packaging). The Vera Wang dress deserves another outing with a different bride but it’s not mine to donate to a local charity shop so it will remain in our attic like a Miss Havisham heirloom. My original 2003 wedding Redwood & Feller tailcoat that I wore that day is still intact, thanks to being kept in a deep freeze at home to avoid the moths.
I must confess, however, that my heavenly (third) milliner wife Laura was busy at 8.30am last Tuesday (first day of Ascot) converting the lemon wool double-breasted waistcoat, a la Harold Acton, that I first wore on my 2003 wedding day into a single breasted waistcoat, after I discovered that it had no chance of fitting 20 years on. Laura converted the waistcoat by simply moving the oyster pearl buttons inwards by six inches. All thanks to a £2.50 sewing kit bought at 8am from a convenience store in Dolphin Square.
Divorced men should not recycle the same wedding tie at another outing. At my first wedding in 2003, all seven ushers were all presented with a smart marigold yellow Bulgari silk tie (from my wife Ilaria’s family shop on Bond Street) at breakfast to wear on the big day, to match a yellow rose buttonhole, plus a spare was included in the box in case anybody spilled scrambled eggs, or found a fried tomato exploding down their tie, before the 11am Mayfair service. On finding my never-worn spare tie two weeks ago in my closet, I wore it to my daughter’s first Holy Communion at St John’s Church in Bridgnorth.
Alas, two of my wedding ushers, and dear friends, who wore those yellow silk ties back in 2003 are no longer alive. Gus Hochschild and Patrick Paines both tragically died in their 50s from cancer. I will wear the spare yellow tie again - at Gus’s memorial service at the Brompton Oratory on September 20.
William Cash
What did you do with your wedding attire? Tell us in the comments below
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