Family says 'yes to the dress' with generations making their own

Rather than the frills and extravagances of modern weddings on reality television, Margaret Hoffman's time walking down the aisle was a modest affair.

With World War II shifting to the Pacific theater, her sweetheart, Frank -- a Navy yeoman -- was home on a month's leave from England.

In the two years or so since they met, their courtship had been from afar, mostly in love letters sent back and forth across the ocean.

So when they officially decided to get married in July 1945, the planning was rushed. She had one week to prepare for her own wedding at the Little Brown Church in the Vale in Nashua.

"It was the only chance we had to get together," she said.

The date was July 8, 1945.

Now 93, Hoffman said her wedding party included two people -- her sister and his brother.

And instead of going to the store to purchase a dress, as they had talked about getting married in letters, she spent the time working as a secretary for the Bureau of Aeronautics in Washington D.C., sewing and hand-embroidering her own.

It was something of a de facto family tradition, said her daughter, Francis.

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Margaret's mother Ruth had also made her lace wedding dress for her 1916 wedding.

The materials for Margaret's frock were simpler.

The knee-length, A-Line wool dress was embroidered with a floral pattern of blue and white yarn that ran along the neckline and near the bottom seam.

Although a little warm for a summer wedding, she loved the off-white color.

Weddings today are an estimated nearly $60 billion industry in the United States, according to business-research firm IBISWorld.

"It was what I could afford," she said.

Her husband's stint in the Philippines was short-lived. When Japan surrendered in August, he shipped back to Iowa.

Married more than 47 years until his death in 1993, they had four children: two daughters and two sons.

Again, their daughter Mary ended up making her own wedding dress and sewed the dress when her daughter eventually became a bride, said Margaret's daughter Francis.

Other brides making their own dresses is not entirely unusual.

An Oklahoma woman told ABC News this month that she spent $70 in materials and eight months to crochet her own wedding dress.

Hoffman swapped stories last week as a group of newly-married six staffers -- including five nurses -- from the IOOF Home & Community Therapy Center in Mason City where she now lives decided to parade for residents in their own wedding dresses.

Over the years, Hoffman and her daughter kept the wool dress in storage along with her mother Ruth's dress -- both still mostly in good condition.

"It goes a long with the care that it takes to preserve family relationships," Francis said. "To me, it's a little symbolic of that."

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