The North Platte Telegraph Bridal Guide 11
daughter. So off the 8-year-old girl went to her aunt, who helped her make a pillow for her first 4-H project. After the pillow came dresses and wool outfits with lining, and help from her grandma — the most-expert of the family seamstresses — who couldn’t sew anymore when Cicely was a teenager, but could advise. She entered her outfits in 4-H contests — including modeling her handmade wool outfits while walking a sheep around an arena for judges to see (it’s called the sheep lead event for the city slickers among us). She showed cattle. She entered cooking and photography 4-H contests. In 2009, Larry, her rooster, won poultry reserve best of show. And now, the 4-H-trained professional was determined to make a wedding dress. And it was going to have sleeves.
this allowed them to be a part of it. She didn’t set out, exactly, to create a vintage wedding, but Dan’s uniform, and her dress and the courthouse all just sort of happened. “It just kind of evolved that way,” she said. * * * After the small wedding, the family group headed to Katalari Farms, a nearby Christmas tree farm, for dinner with prime rib catered by Whitefoot
Then the newlyweds went to Topeka, Kansas, for an Army “family drill day.” After that, Dan headed to Anchorage for a nursing job. Cicely went back to work. It wasn’t the big wedding of her childhood dreams, but it was the right one, an intimate, happy, beautiful vintage affair with family. Maybe, she said, they’ll have a bigger
Catering in Boelus (did we mention that part of Wardyn’s job is overseeing ag promotion and development?) The Christmas tree farm let them reserve their first Christmas tree as a married couple, and the bride and groom — in gown and uniform — cut it down. Everyone sat at one long table. The couple had their first dance to Nat King Cole’s “L-O-V-E.” They had a two-layer Dairy Queen ice cream cake (Dan’s idea). She wore her
“No one has sleeves,” she said. “I thought it would be neat to have something no one else has.”
She sketched out the shimmery, flowing dress she imagined, bought 13 yards of silk, 10 yards of satin, covered buttons and a bolt of pattern fabric. She watched YouTube videos and laid out her design on a grid. She’d go to the bathroom with a tape measure to measure her body parts — the length from the middle of her sternum to her shoulder blade, the length of her arms, the width of her waist — then go add to the pattern. She used old bed sheets to cut the dress from her pattern first, so she could make adjustments (and realized she’d have to choose either a low back or a low front, but not both). The hardest part was getting the low back to fit right — snug but not tight, so it wouldn’t pull in front. She redid it with the bed sheets six or seven times. On Nov. 16 — two weeks before the wedding — she cut the silk. She found silk much easier to sew than satin. Dan helped with some edge stitching. At her mini-bachelorette party, she and friends watched a Husker football game and she sewed. They hosted Thanksgiving so she could sew. Her aunts came to Thanksgiving. She put on her dress for them and they helped her make adjustments she couldn’t do on her own. She loved this, because those aunts — who played such a big part in her early sewing years — wouldn’t be at the small wedding, so
grandmother’s pearls, the same ones her mom had worn at her wedding. They used the cake knife his grandparents used to cut their wedding cake. The next day, she was doing a presentation at Nebraska Cattlemen.
reception some time next summer. She’s thinking she might use some of that extra silk to make a cocktail dress. “We’ll see if I have time,” said the bride. Here’s betting she’ll find it.
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