Miller Creates Mansion’s Wedding Gown Exhibit

Here Comes the Bride — 100 Years of Wedding Fashions from Families of the Yellowstone Valley

By Gloria Wester

Patti Miller, of Laurel has served the Moss Mansion at 914 Division in Billings as exhibit coordinator since 1989. The retired Laurel High School physical education teacher and cross country coach has turned her energy toward adding fashion and flourish to the exquisite turn-of-the-century surroundings of the P.B. and Mattie Moss home.

“The Laurel Outlook story that they shared with other newspapers up and down the Yellowstone Valley brought 52 offers of dresses,” said Miller. “The phone started ringing right away. I had so many offers to loan dresses that I could not use them all. It broke my heart to turn them away.”

The wedding gown and accessories exhibit that opened with a special tea on March 1 is the fourth wedding theme exhibit Miller has designed for the Moss. This one is unique with its multi-generational theme. Several of the display settings feature three or more generations of gowns from a single family.

The oldest dress, other than Mattie Moss’s own 1889 gown, in the collection is from Billings resident Goldie Rae, who loaned the dress her Aunt Ella Glendenning wore when she married Alfonzo Hotchkiss, Feb. 14, 1906, Valentine’s Day, in Mount Ayr, Iowa. Besides the dress, Rae’s display includes the certificate of marriage, the wedding invitation, and a framed picture. “It’s been in a box for all those years,” said Rae.

In keeping with the “something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue” tradition, a four-dress ensemble from Diana Propp, of Huntley, features a hankie that the grandmother, mother and two daughters carried on their trip down the aisle of matrimony.

“Another great story is the double wedding of Anton and Katherine Berger and Victor and Barbara Kohr. Linda Oberg from Shepherd, who loaned the dress, said that the two brides wore a necklace that had been worn by their grandmother and mother. The grandmother divided the necklace to create two new necklaces for the double ceremony,” Miller recounted.

Upstairs in the boys’ room, is one dress worn by three generations of ladies in the Steiger family — Pat Bernatavich (Duane Steiger, 1957), Annette Steiger (Gary Hart, 1979), and Lexie Hart (Eric Bueling, 2006). The 1950s creation features Dupioni silk and Chantilly lace, imported from Italy, and purchased in Chicago. It fit all three with minor alterations.

Rae’s was not the only vintage dress that had not seen the light of day for decades. Miller has weeks of hours into steaming, repairing and reshaping the gowns, shoes, gloves, and veils that were trusted to her caring hands. Each item had to be documented to be returned to the rightful bride, besides.

“I couldn’t have done all of this without the help of my friend Cathy Holloway and my wonderful husband, Darryl Whitcanack,” said Miller. “He helps carry things in.” The mannequins are fragile and unwieldy. “He deals with mannequins that have parts missing and that want to fall off when they are moved,” she said. She showed a mannequin that has missing hands and how she arranges the gown to cover the infirmities of the “model.”

“We added up Patti’s hours. She worked over 100 hours putting up this exhibit,” said Museum Director Joyce Mayer. “It has really come from the heart. She has arranged all of the vignettes to get a picture of the family connections. Her arrangements tell a fabulous, touching story. One of the women who came to help her set up, touch up and tweak the displays, started to cry when she saw her dress on the mannequin.

“It is a day that lives with you the rest of your life,” said Mayer of the wedding dates recorded throughout the mansion in the display. “Women always remember the day they got married.

“The Moss is a house that seems to be imbued with the sense of Mattie Moss,” continued Mayer. “This was her house, so it has a very female, womanly sensibility about it, so to mark this day in a woman’s life — the Moss is the perfect setting.

“The Moss Mansion is a way for us to preserve our personal spaces,” Mayer explained. “In other words, a lot of what we learn about in history is from the public record. But when you come to a historic house museum, it is a museum that is created out of people’s personal space. It gives us a real look into history rather than an institutional look. Things are still in context.”

Besides the wedding displays, Miller has created several hat exhibits, a 1940s exhibit based around the war theme, and she decorates one of the Christmas trees at the Moss, an exhibit that has become a traffic-building tradition.

The wedding exhibit will adorn the rooms of the mansion through May. The exhibit is part of the regular admission price of $7 for adults, $5 for seniors and for age 13-18, $3 for age 6-12. Tours are on the hour Tuesday through Saturday through March from 10-4; Monday through Saturday through May from 10-5. The mansion is open year round.

Call the mansion for details, 256-5100.