Photo Friday: Prom Dress Edition

Good afternoon!

Wow, folks! Thanks for all the encouragement on my DIY candles! It is great to get encouragement on these things, I'll tell you what! :) I'm sorry I repaid all your kindness with no Photo Friday morning post...Matthew's going out of town for a "bachelor weekend" in Tunica with his friend Brian, so as a surprise, he took me to the flea market a day early! I already got a couple crazy things, but am sure I will drag home even more tomorrow when I go with my dad. And we ate lunch, and he just now hit the road. It is BEYOND goofy how hard it is to say goodbye to that little tiny of mine-- Matthew says it's a good indicator that we should get married, if being apart for a weekend, after five years of dating, is still kind of a heartstring tugging proposition! Le sigh. L'amour.

Without further ado, however-- PHOTO FRIDAY:

The only thing I love more than a pastel, chiffon cupcake of a prom dress on a tiny midcentury high schooler? A pastel, chiffon  cupcake of a prom dress on a tiny midcentury high schooler wearing glasses. Is this little gal not the bee's knees? I love the background of the house, complete with baby photos on the wall and amazing barkcloth curtains, not to mention the junior or senior prom goer's "Aw ma!" expression. I wish someone had told me to smile more in high school photos! I feel like 90% of them catch this giraffe of a teenager, draped in seventies' polyester, making somewhere between a smirk and a "get out of here!" grimaced expression when would it have killed me to just smile? This girl looks very cute in her pink dress and her earring/necklace/bracelet set, however.

All of these photos are from a set on this user's flickr labeled "Grandma's old slides". Thank you, grandma, for taking the time to take these slides, and thank you, flickr user, for uploading them so we could sneak a peek into PROM 1958 (what's your guess on the year? I bet that's close  I read the caption as was dead on!). Here's the girl of the hour in a different prom dress, same living room, with a white evening coat, white gloves, and white clutch to round out her ensemble. I LOVE dresses that hourglass out like this one into an actual bell. I have a couple crinolines and dresses with built in crinolines, but I always have this fear of looking like a Civil War reenactor as I sweep into a friend's party or a restaurant like Scarlett herself. As my wedding dress has this kind of a skirt, except floor length, I'm going to have to practice sitting down in it so I don't put on the wrong kind of show for my guests!  People of the fifties'....would you just sit down and bunch your skirts around you? Was it normal to take up a whole side of a booth because every other girl was SIMILARLY dressed in a hot-air balloon of a gown? I want to know so I can be graceful, too!

Here's the same night before the wrap went on. I love that you can get a better look at the curtains as well as the bodice of her dress from this angle. Isn't she so "reet petite", as the song goes? I was surprised that her shoes weren't white, but like that it breaks up the matchiness of the accessories we saw in the photo above. The same as in time capsule estate sales I attend, I am paying close attention to the way the room is arranged and the way the pictures are hung on the wall. And see those horizontal blinds? I wouldn't have even thought of them. Think they were aluminum?

You can see more photos from this set here, including a shot of this lady as a young woman, still bespectacled, with her family in the early sixties' (in front of a mini bus, in one case!). How sweet!

Anyway, sorry this is so late-- gotta get back to the self-imposed sweatshop that IS my DIY living room wedding prep table. I hope you have a fantastic weekend, and I will see you on Monday! Til then.