Allison Rinaldi Wore 127-Year-Old Wedding Dress (VIDEO)

The "Today" Show gave us a nice little present this morning when it hosted recent bride Allison Rinaldi and her 127-year-old wedding dress.

Rinaldi is one of five women in her family to wear the ivory, off-white dress, which sports a high neckline and 3/4-length sleeves that must have been all the rage in 1884. That's the first year the gown was worn, by Rinaldi's great-great-grandmother Nellie Campbell.

Since then the dress walked down the aisle in 1941, 1975 and 1982, when Allison's mother wore it to marry her father.

As "Today" assures viewers, every bride who's worn the aging frock has had a long and happy marriage (which is nice and all, but wouldn't it have been fun if this was a "127-Year-Old CURSED Wedding Dress!" video segment?).

What's kept it so pristine after all these years? Just simply wrapping it up in the closet, Allison's mother Mimi says-- and making sure the brides don't wear it to the reception.

WATCH:

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For images of the dress through the years, go to Mirror.co.uk.

Comments

[catcancook]

02:32 PM on 08/22/2011

Lovely story, lovely dress.

[corsair807]

07:37 AM on 08/22/2011

GREAT STORY

[syds180turn]

12:18 PM on 08/21/2011

Great story and a wonderful tradition.

[caseyblab]

09:31 PM on 08/20/2011

Are you letting the D Team write your headlines? "Grossed out" is a bit of a stretch. Again, really really lame.

[dovelove]

08:41 PM on 08/20/2011

That's pretty cool.

[BlueZoo]

12:51 PM on 08/20/2011

The wedding gown is gorgeous but the idea that a young woman would want to wear it over a hundred years later is priceless! She must be a very special young lady and I would be so proud if she was my daughter. Young people today tend to sneer at tradition and history and this young woman chose to embrace it. I wish her a long and happy marriage and daughters just like herself who will wear this gown with great pride!

[canadaloki]

10:58 AM on 08/20/2011

Spam

[KIVPossum]

09:37 AM on 08/20/2011

That's sweet.

[Kitten Kramer]

05:05 AM on 08/20/2011

What a very beautiful story. I hope the bride and her family have many daughters to pass the dress down to so they can wear it. Great family traditions, great family.

[tdrei53589]

12:49 AM on 08/20/2011

Uh, what is there to be "Grossed Out" about?????

[BlueZoo]

12:51 PM on 08/20/2011

Good question!

[Bishop Coxcomb]

09:59 AM on 08/22/2011

I guess the articles writer believe the great grandmother to be buried in the dress?

[outwithshelby]

12:26 AM on 08/20/2011

nice story

[johnyonkle]

11:29 PM on 08/19/2011

Nice to see a lady with class and respect for her family. I bet this was a grand honor for her. Unlike the TV shows that show girls spending months trying to have the perfect dress and spending a fourtune on it, when someone should tell them the truth, no matter what a bride wears everyone says she is beautiful, because they don't really care about the dress, they care about the person wearing it, and if they don't they are there just to get free drinks at the reception.

[Namea]

08:03 PM on 08/20/2011

I'm so sorry! I flagged you by mistake when I was trying to fav you :/ You have a valid point and I whole heartedly agree :) Sorry again :

[SuzyScorp]

10:58 PM on 08/19/2011

That is such a nice, heart-warming story, and lucky for the women in that family, they all took good care of the dress. My first wedding in 1987, I wanted to try to wear my mother's wedding gown, so I tried it on in front of her (at my parent's home), and not only did it fit, it looked awesome. There were just two problems... 1. The dress had yellowed so badly b/c my mother never had it sealed up in plastic to perserve it. She just put it in a trunk after her wedding. 2. There were some areas on the dress that needed some sewing to fix. There were a couple of tears in the material. My dad brought the 1954 wedding dress to a specialist and she said she was sorry, but it was too badly yellowed and she couldn't ever get it to look right.. I even got a 2nd opinion, and same thing... Sad, but I did buy my own gown and made sure I had it sealed in plastic. That was 25 years ago and I never had a daughter! lol

[Touki10]

01:11 AM on 08/20/2011

Suzy,

I work with historic textiles and I can say that storing your dress in plastic is the worst thing you can do for it. Plastic degrades horribly and in a sealed environment it degrades onto your dress. There is a reason why they tell you to check the number on the bottom of plastic containers that you eat or drink from.

The damage to your mother's dress wasn't from not being wrapped in plastic but more likely from being in a wood chest. Wood is acidic. Close the lid for any length of time and you literally fume acid all over the textile. It yellows it. A good textile conservator can generally fix that on a dress of the young age of '1954'.

I suspect that your 'specialists' knew wedding gowns but had no idea about textiles. Get your dress out of the plastic and have it wrapped and padded in acid-free tissue and placed inside a museum-quality (very important) acid-free box so the poor thing can breathe.

[SuzyScorp]

07:19 PM on 08/21/2011

Hi there. I'm not 100% my first wedding dress is even in "plastic," b/c I haven't seen it in 25 years, but the people who "preserved" it for me, said that they did something with plastic and other things, so.. But even if it is falling apart, so did the marriage, and I wouldn't want to see that dress again, b/c my mother died right before the wedding, and I like my other wedding gown better. Now in order to preserve that gown, where do I bring it, do you think??? Thanks for the valuable info!

[mrsreid1976]

07:40 PM on 08/19/2011

That's amazing! I wish I could have fit into my grandmother's dress. It was a beautiful dress. But in 1955 she was like a size 2 & also 5' 2". I am 5' 10". The smallest I have ever been was a sz 6 & people called me bony, if I got down to size 2, I would look like a skeleton. Not to ,mention if I was able to fit it, the length would be more like cocktail dress length. LOL!

[TKB90807]

07:07 PM on 08/19/2011

What an absolutely wonderful tradition. I wonder how much that lovely dress cost back in 1884?