Here comes the Bride ...

The Ellen Noël Art Museum has scheduled its annual vintage style show with a theme on the history of bridal fashion — complete with its own wedding reception as opposed to the expected tea party.

“This just fit better,” museum publicist Kay Crites said.

The yearly show started in 2007 with 200 years of fashion and last year centered on children’s clothing. The new show includes wedding dresses in a 100-year span, from 1860 to 1960, ranging from the Civil War era to the Vietnam War era. Tickets to the style show costs $35 and serves as a museum fundraiser. Crites said she got to model a dress herself in 2008. All models volunteer to fit into the dresses of old.

“These women were very small,” Crites joked.

Dresses featured will include bridal gowns and dresses by both mothers of the bride and members of the wedding party, as well as general guests.

In addition to the style show, the museum has opened a holiday quilt and button exhibit scheduled to run during museum hours through Jan. 3. Guest curator for the exhibit and narrator of the style show is Midlander Steven Porterfield.

He said the quilt and button show will involve four quilt collections from the 1840s on to the 1940s, and he said the quilts represent a variety of styles and pieces.

Porterfield said the wedding dresses come from his own collection, which features dresses from as early as 1748 all the way to the 1980s. However, the bridal event will feature 10 actual bridal gowns, one for each decade covered in the style show.

Including the other dresses, models will show off 40 different pieces of wedding clothing.

Crites said one trend in wedding fashion that interested her was a “blush” dress, one that has a slightly pink hue. Porterfield said women started moving away from the pure white dresses for a couple years as part of a fad in the 1950s.

“It had just a touch of pink,” he said.

The move toward white wedding dresses themselves didn’t occur until Queen Victoria started the trend with her wedding in 1840. Before that time, brides chose a variety of colors for their gowns.

“Dresses would be of as many different colors as you could imagine, from black to green to taupe,” Porterfield said.

He said vintage dresses have become a part of history and something to connect to the past.

And the quilts are more than a way to keep warm.

“They are now considered an art form,” he said.

IF YOU GO

>> What: Ellen Noël Art Museum vintage style show featuring 100 years of bridal fashion modeled by volunteers and opening with a wedding cake reception.

>> When: 5 p.m. Monday.

>> Where: Ellen Noël Art Museum, 4909 E. University Blvd.

>> Tickets: $35.

>> Call: 550-9696.