And this month – 72 years after Stoneberg married at the Ebenezer Lutheran Church – his granddaughter Serena Stoneberg Lipari wore the same dress to the same Chicago church for her Aug. 5 wedding.
“There was no doubt that I would become the eighth bride to wear the dress,” Lipari, 27, said of the long-sleeved gown with a long train, high neck and tiny, sleek buttons down the back.
Lipari’s grandmother is now deceased, but relatives on the pews included an aunt, her great-aunts and several cousins who had each taken turns wearing Adele’s classic dress.
“When I started walking down the aisle and thought of my grandmother also wearing the dress, the emotion hit me,” Lipari said. “I felt a special connection with her on my wedding day.”
The Stoneberg family’s wedding dress tradition began when Adele Larson, then 21, got engaged to Roy Stoneberg in 1950 and took a trip with her mother, Anna Larson, to the eighth bridal shop. floor of Marshall Field to try on dresses.
“The dress she chose was well-made and timeless,” said Adele’s sister, Eleanor “Elly” Larson Milton, 90, who was the bridesmaid at the wedding.
“It’s a very classic dress, with a beautiful bodice, mandarin collar and lots of buttons,” she said. “When you touch this high quality satin, you realize it is way above average.”
When it came time for Milton to get married in Chicago in 1953, she knew exactly what she wanted to wear.
“My mother took great care of the dress and stored it in an airtight box,” she said. “It never occurred to me not to wear it. It was perfect in every way.”
After Milton’s wedding, the dress was professionally cleaned and stored again, this time for 16 years.
Milton’s sister, Sharon Larson Frank, decided to unbox it and continue the family tradition in 1969 when she married John Frank.
“Our mother never told us we had to wear the dress – it just evolved,” Frank, 77, said.
“It’s a traditional dress, and we could all adapt it with a few minor adjustments,” she said. “When my mom offered to take me shopping for another dress, I immediately said, ‘No, I’d like to wear this one. ”
After the wedding, the dress was put away again until Adele Stoneberg’s daughter, Sue Stoneberg McCarthy, married Robert McCarthy in 1982.
McCarthy, now 66, said she added her own little touches to make the dress her own.
“We all had our own veils, bouquets and jewelry, and our individual personalities shone through as we walked down the aisle on our wedding day,” she said.
“Wearing this beautiful dress on my special day made me feel close to my mom and aunts,” McCarthy said.
In 1990, the dress was carefully removed from its storage box for the fifth time so that Eleanor Milton’s daughter, Carole Milton Zmuda, could wear it at her wedding to Lawrence Zmuda.
She said she had long admired the dress since she was a bridesmaid at her Aunt Sharon’s wedding.
“I decided to unbutton the neckline, but it was otherwise perfect,” said Zmuda, 61, who now lives in Great Falls, Va.
“When I look back, I always had a feeling growing up that I was going to wear this dress,” she said.
His sister Jean Milton Ellis was the next to wear it, when she married in 1991 to Tom Ellis.
Ellis, 66, from Westford, Mass., said she has fond memories of meeting her grandmother, aunts and cousins for turkey sandwiches and Frango Mint Pie in Marshall Field’s Walnut Room before the store was acquired by Macy’s in 2006.
“I felt honored and privileged to wear [my aunt Adele’s] beautiful dress,” Ellis said, noting that her aunt died about three years before her wedding.
“I grew up seeing pictures of my loved ones in the dress, so I was proud to do the same,” she said. “It’s as classic today as it was in 1950.”
His cousin, Julie Frank Mackey, became the seventh bride to don the satin dress, in 2013, for her wedding to Tom Mackey.
“I am significantly taller than the other brides, so my mother [Sharon] added a wide ribbon at the hem and lengthened my veil to hide the bodice adjustments,” said Mackey, 42, who lives in Manchester, Vermont.
“We’ve all been lucky because it suits us pretty well,” she added. “The dress deeply connects all the women in our family.”
It was a touching moment this month to see her cousin Serena walking down the same aisle of the same church her mother and aunts were married in, she said.
“Everyone who got married in the dress had a lasting, healthy marriage, so we like to think it’s good luck,” Mackey said. “We hope to continue to preserve the dress – and the tradition – for many weddings to come.”
If the wedding dress is used for another 72 years, it may be partly due to the efforts of her mother, who took care of cleaning and maintaining the dress and storing it properly.
“I keep it in a sealed box and use a small [mannequin like] shape on top to help the bodice hold its shape,” said Sharon Larson Frank.
She said there were many young female family members who could marry in their future.
“Of course they won’t be required to wear the dress,” Larson Frank said with a laugh. “We don’t want them to feel any pressure.”
But if they’re wearing the family wedding dress, they’ll likely buy — or perhaps borrow — a dress for their reception.
“We now have an unwritten rule that no one wears the dress to their reception,” Larson Frank said. “To avoid stains.
