I’ve almost finished my mother’s wedding box using the scraps of fabric leftover from her wedding dress.  I’ve found some pretty special pieces to put in it.  I’ll describe here and pictures will follow later in the week.  The box opens at the top and has a drawer at the bottom.  The front is decorated with a bow that matches the bow on my mother’s dress.  

The colors of the wedding were pretty much red and white.  In the red satin-lined drawer is a stack of letters tied in a red satin bow.  The letters are communications between my parents while they were still engaged and my father was in boot camp for the Army Reserves.  I was trying to decide on a knob for the drawer and had purchased two:  one was a crystal looking one that looked more like a wedding and the other was a porcelain one that was less appropriate but I liked the look better — as so did my mother.  But I decided that I would go with the crystal look.  Then I read just one of the letters from my mother to my father.  She had a friend whose father build furniture and was building a few pieces for them.  She had been deciding on the knobs on the furniture and I guess had been thinking a lot about it.  We still have the pieces and the knobs are porcelain.  There is a line in the letter that says that she loves him more than a porcelain knob.  Decision made, I swapped out the knobs.  

When you open the top there is a wedding picture and an announcement.  The announcement came to me by chance — my mother didn’t have one.  Someone who had been to the wedding more than 50 years before had recently lost his wife and was going through their belongings.  He found the announcement and contacted a friend from that time period, Janet Mears.  He asked Janet if she thought Mom would want the announcement and she told him that she didn’t know about Mom but I would definitely want it.  So he mailed it to me.  That was just a couple years before we found the dress fabric.  

There are three parts of the top section.  You open the right side and you find a white satin-lined section.  My mother also made the wedding dresses for both of my sisters.  The white satin is leftover from my sister Heather’s dress.  In that box you will find a Christmas ornament made with red ribbon and cut up pie tins.  My parents were broke on their first Christmas so that invited friends over to make ornaments out of old pie tins and ribbons.  This is the last of those ornaments. At the top of the lid is a pouch where my mother can describe the party in her own words and own hand.

You open the left side and find my father’s wallet.  My father died when I was nine.  This is his wallet unchanged from when he died.  The lid of this section also has the pouch for my mother to write how they met.

Finally, in the middle is a small stone box.  When I was six we started camping each year at King’s Canyon National Park — which is another long story.  Anyway, the white stone box was purchased there. You pull the box up with a ribbon with a covered button on the end.  When you take the lid off the box there is my mother’s wedding ring set.  (My father was buried with his wedding ring.)  

So that’s the box.  I just have a few finishing touches then I’ll post the pictures.