Hi!
This is such a great story that I had to repost it on my blog. I was caught up in the whirl wind of the coverage that it produced.
The main point is that Pilar wore her great-grandmother's gown and it was truly an amazing experience as was for her Mother, Aunt and Great-grandmother. (4 Generations)In a throw away world, it is so extra special to have been part of this wonderful story to host her reception and pre-photos!
Here it goes...
"Four women in one California family have walked down the aisle in the same wedding gown handmade by the family’s matriarch in 1932.
Pilar O’Hara Kassouf, 27, was the most recent woman in her family to wear the dress made by her great-grandmother when she wed Nick Kassouf in September in Orange, California and the reception and before pictures taken at the Jones Victorian Estate
“Once I tried the dress on, I knew,” O’Hara Kassouf told ABC News. “I couldn’t look anywhere else after that. It fit perfectly and didn’t need any alterations, so that was another sign.”
O’Hara Kassouf’s great-grandmother, Maria Teresa Moreno, was a mother of four who learned how to sew before she came to the United States from Mexico as a young woman.
Moreno, who was known as “Grande” to her family, sewed her own wedding dress for her 1932 wedding to Manuel Moreno in Los Angeles.
“She was a very frugal woman who worked hard,” said Marta Prietto O’Hara, Moreno’s granddaughter and O’Hara Kassouf’s mother.When O’Hara got married in 1983, she wore her grandmother’s wedding gown.
“When I saw the fabric I fell in love with it and the dress was in perfect condition,” O’Hara said of the crepe-back satin fabric dress. “I tried it on and I said, ‘I am wearing this dress.’”
O’Hara’s mom, who wore a dress made by Moreno at her wedding, and grandmother updated the dress by cutting a “V” in the back and adding lace trim and beading around the neckline.They also trimmed off some of the dress’s original nine-foot train.
When O’Hara tried the dress on before her wedding, one of her sisters, Elena Salinas, was close by watching.
“I was at our mom’s house when Marta tried it on and I thought, ‘Oh, let me try it on, too,’” said Salinas, who was just out of high school at the time. “I knew. I said, ‘Forget it. I’m wearing this, too.’”When Salinas tied the knot in 1997, she became the third family member to wear her grandmother’s dress down the aisle.
“When I got engaged, I was like, ‘Wedding dress, check,’” Salinas recalled. “It’s just a gorgeous dress.”
O’Hara Kassouf wore the same tiara that Salinas wore at her wedding. She also continued a family tradition by becoming the sixth woman in the family to wear Moreno’s earrings at her wedding."
