The Post News
A box containing a bridal gown from a wedding in Devon 84 years ago has been unearthed in Australia.
Melbourne bride-to-be Claire Ransome was looking for a vintage wedding dress for herself when she bought the box online after it was saved from a skip.
She was amazed to find the wedding dress and flowers and decorations from the wedding of Gertrude Bloye and Fred MacDonald in Plymouth in 1938.
The dress has now gone on display in Castlemaine, Victoria.
Bride Gertrude packed her wedding dress in a cardboard box from local department store Dingles after her wedding.
The couple did not have any children and the box with wedding treasures was passed down the family before it was sent to a relative in Australia.
There it was spotted being thrown into a skip in Perth and put up for sale online.
Ms Ransome said: "It was like a vintage wedding showbag, the gloves that her husband wore, dried roses, waxed buds from the wedding cake and then from the very bottom out came this beautiful wedding dress, like liquid silk."
Peter Bottomley, who curated an exhibition of wedding dresses in Castlemaine, said: "This lady preserved it for all those years.
"Seeing it back out of the dumpster and looking beautiful is a great end to the story."
Ms Ransome ended up wearing another dress at her wedding but she did carry in her purse a mother-of-pearl hair clip from Gertrude's box of treasures.
