Tabitha Gardens Assisted Living in Crete had a special event for its residents this Valentines Day.
On Feb. 14, residents, staff and family members gathered in common area for a memorable Valentines Day fashion show. Dresses dating back two generations were brought out of storage to be worn and modeled by Tabitha staff for their owners.
The dresses spent so many decades stored away that some of the residents had already started to forget what they looked like.
Evy Thalmann, a resident of Tabitha Gardens, came up with the idea herself and played a key role in organizing the event. Eventually, Thalmann ended up with 10 dresses in her room. Some participants even contributed dresses that once belonged to their mothers or sisters, just to contribute to the occasion.
“I had my wedding dress here, and I thought, ‘Oh, I wonder how many others might still have theirs,' so I started asking around to see if anyone else knew where their dress was or if they could find it,” Thalmann said.
Thalmann was one of the many who handmade her own wedding dress. She was a home economics teacher and made the dress while she was teaching. The full price of the dress ran her about $85, of the $85, $40 went towards the lace that went around the veil. Thalmann wore her dress to the altar on a snowy winter day in 1973.
“It snowed that day, through all of our reception. And then we left in the snow to go to Omaha before flying to Hawaii for our honeymoon,” she said.
Shirley Siedhoff remembers her winter wedding, too. But for Siedhoff, it got to the point where she almost forgot what her dress looked like. It had been stuffed in her cedar chest for so long that everything else got piled in there, too, but she finally got to see it again after many years.
“I got married here in Crete. But I was so worried about my dress making it in time because it was in Omaha,” Siedhoff said. “The snow was so bad that day, and I wasn’t sure if it would get here. But it arrived that morning, just in time for the wedding.”
As the years passed by, a lot of these dresses lost a lot of their original flair. Mostly from being stored in the cedar chests and in the back of closets and the constant digging around in there looking for things.
Yet to this day, these dresses hold a significant amount of history, love and beauty.
“This is the first year we do an event like this,” Tabitha staff member Tavian Vazquez said. “If we could, we would all like to make this a tradition and keep it up for years to come.”
The event also served as a reminder of how marriage and traditions have changed over the years. Residents shared reflections on commitment, offering wisdom to younger generations about the importance of staying together, making time to travel and enjoy life with a partner.
For these residents it was a day filled with cherished memories, laughter and a deep appreciation for the enduring power of love.
