Mom and Grandpa and a Dress from the City of Paris

            This is a photo of my mom in her wedding dress (with her father, Archie). She looks amazing, doesn’t she? Well, that dress was from the City of Paris in San Francisco… and the story behind how my mom came to own it makes me tear up every time.
First – let me say that my mom and her family came to the U.S.  in the 1950s on a one-way “make it or break it” ticket from Scotland. They settled in San Francisco and my grandparents worked their asses off to get the family out of debt and buy a home.Theirs is the American Dream story but that’s another post.
Anyway, my mom worked her way through college. She was working at Sears and attending San Francisco State when she met my pops. Neither one owned a car. My dad used to take the bus to pick up my mom from Sears after her shift, escort her home, then return home himself by bus.
Needless to say, Mom did not have a lot of money for her wedding dress. In what little free time she had, she squeezed in visits to Macy’s and the Emporium. She just could not find a dress that she liked and time was running out.
One day, my mom (by herself) decided to go to the City of Paris. Folks who remember the City of Paris in San Francisco know that it was really something special. It was a store for the ”haves.”
The sales ladies were all dressed in elegant black suits. The store, itself, was drop dead gorgeous. A lady approached my mom and asked her what she was there for.  When my mom replied “wedding dress,” that was it. These ladies were on a mission to find my mom the perfect dress.
Now, my mom is really tiny. She is all of 5’ 1”… maybe she was 100 pounds then.  One of the ladies said: “Oh, you are so petite. I think that I have the dress for you. It’s one of our ‘show dresses’ and it is one-of-a-kind. Let me go get it for you to try on.”
And the dress fit perfectly.  No alterations needed. I don’t know how my mom was able to afford it. I suspect that the sales ladies hooked her up with a special deal.  I will always be grateful for the way those women treated my mom.
Years later, I would try on the dress for my own wedding.  But I am 5+ inches taller than my mom and several sizes larger.  I could not zip up the dress and I would have had to add fabric to the bottom of it. I just couldn’t touch it. It really is perfect.
   

Taken on: October 21, 2009

Tags:

mom

grandpa

dress

City of Paris

1960s

San Francisco

mid-century « less

Sets appears in: • FAMILY Photos

Stats: 208 views / 2 comments

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