This summer, the Long Island Museum celebrates the history of life’s most universal and cherished event. Down the Isle: Wedding Traditions on Long Island (June 3 – October 22, 2006) will explore the cultural transformations of this important day, from its roots in this area’s rural past, to its evolution into a full-fledged major production which now costs the average Long Island couple more than $40,000.

Down the Isle springs from the museum’s outstanding collection of more than 40 historic wedding dresses that cover all decades and all styles. The earliest dress displayed is a stunning metallic gold embroidered silk dress worn by Sara Onderdonk in her 1785 wedding in Manhasset; the latest is a stylish satin dress worn by Tracey Brown, a young African American woman, in her 2004 Sag Harbor wedding. The dresses and assorted outfits are a stunning blend of fabrics: organza, tulle, chiffon, satin, and velvet in a variety of colors. But the exhibition goes far beyond the apparel to include many objects, such as a quilt created by an 1846 Stony Brook bride, a silver tankard celebrating a 1710 Setauket wedding anniversary, vintage wedding photo albums from the 1950s and 60s, and much more.

The exhibition is organized into 6 separate sections. “The Wedding March” places 12 costumed mannequins in a decade-by-decade context, exploring the changes in wedding fashions over time. An evocative timeline will be paired with the wedding dresses. Objects nearby will include colorful nineteenth century men’s waistcoats and an entire case of items sure to bring “oohs” and “aahs”…intricate and exquisite wedding shoes.

“Something Old: The Early Rural Long Island Wedding” discusses the changing wedding patterns of both pre-Victorian and Victorian years on Long Island. The biggest highlight in this section will be a late 1820s outdoor wedding vignette, with a bride’s dress from an 1828 Middle Island wedding and an 1825 pleasure wagon from the museum’s carriage collection. In the 1700s and the 1800s, Long Island weddings gradually became more elaborate. Still, by the 1890s, local couples often planned their weddings in days and weeks, not months and years, as a series of invitations from Riverhead to Brooklyn illustrate.

“Something New: The Modern Long Island Wedding” brings the story through the twentieth century, from the simpler weddings of the Great Depression and World War II to the “mortgage-your-house weddings” of today. A scene of a 1920s wedding photographic studio, with figures posed in a studio setting, will be the highlight of this area. This portion of the exhibition also considers the impact of gay weddings on Long Island, a topic of increasing importance over the last several years. The section will also have film clips from Long Island weddings assembled over the last 80 years, as well as an area for people to post memories of their own wedding stories…both the crazy and the sublime are welcome!

“Here Comes the Bill: The Long Island Wedding Industry” will give visitors an awareness of how companies have grown in accord with the more elaborate weddings of the postwar years. Companies oriented around different aspects of the wedding ceremony actually started on Long Island around the time of the Civil War. However, it wasn’t until recently that the trappings of a more formal wedding – the Hummer limousines, the decadent floral arrangements, the chocolate fountains, all at stunning Long Island banquet hall venues – became part of normalized nuptials. The star objects of this section will be two wedding cake models, designed by the cake designer Sugar, Sugar of Westhampton, displayed side-by-side. One cake will be a large, 36” high modern cake from today; the other will be a simpler, smaller Victorian-style 24” high cake. The point is that weddings have long had a glamorous and commercialized side. But this aspect is more visible (and perhaps more extreme) today than ever before.

 “You Must Remember This: Wedding Anniversaries” is the final section of the exhibition. Visitors will love this special area dedicated to couples’ stories: a set of 10 photographs from Long Island couples, both in their just married phase and their most recent phase, will be juxtaposed in two columns. But it will be up to visitors to choose who became who…to pull a door and see if they are right, along with a story of that couple’s lives in recent decades.

Down the Isle will have visitors storming down the aisle to get their tickets this summer—lined up to see the history of this most memorable day in our lives.

Down the Isle is presented by: