Beautiful Brides: Lisa Wingate

Besides being a fab author, Lisa Wingate is one of my fellow Belles over on SouthernBelleView. Love blogging and associating with this woman.


About her wedding dress, Lisa writes:


One of the neatest things about our wedding was that my dress was remade from my mother's dress.  She is an incredible seamstress, and may hours of tender loving care went into creating that dress.


(RH: That's Lisa on the right in her mother's altered dress.)

Another special event at our wedding day didn't happen during the wedding, but during the reception afterwards.

Being in Texas, where old-fashioned street dances still take place, and family-friendly dance halls still exist in many small towns, we knew we wanted not just a punch and cake reception; we wanted a dance.

We were in college at the time, and so were all our friends, so we imagined that the young crowd would have a great time while the old folks lounged around in chairs and told stories from "back in the day."

We never imagined that the couple who would light up the dance floor all night long would be my grandparents, Vi and Norman Mannion.

I'd always known that my grandparents met at a dance, where my grandfather was playing in the band. During a break, he took my grandmother for a turn on the floor and fell in love at first sight (or first dance).

(RH: Lisa's mom Sharon in the original dress. I love the wide skirt!)

He went home that night and told his mother he'd found the girl he was going to marry... and he did! Fifty years later they were cutting a rug at our wedding while the young folks stood around the edges of the dance floor, clapping and looking on in awe. 

Gram and Gramps knew all the old dances, and when they danced, their bodies may have been older and slower, but they were still perfectly in step, still a young couple at heart, just as in love as that boy and girl who danced that first dance so many years ago.

(RH: Lisa, I love that story!!)