A shell pink 1950’s wedding dress and shoulder wrap get a refresh and are wearable once again

I recently received a donation of two lovely 1950s dresses donated by Jane's daughter. This first one here, she wasn't quite sure where this one would have been worn, but she does believe that her mother created this dress and did the design herself. It's a unique combination of a coral and black combination I haven't really seen before, so I will restore this one in the future. The second one here, I thought I just assumed that it was a prom dress. It's a classic pink strapless. It's a lovely shell pink and it had a really neat kind of shrug shoulder wrap that went around the waist on it, but then I later learned that this was her mother's wedding dress. I absolutely love that and they met, the couple met at the Cincinnati Yacht Club and I guess Catherine Jane, who went by the name of Jane, said that when she first laid eyes on him she knew that he was the man that she was going to marry. So the dress itself is actually in really good condition and just needing a basic refresh. So I'm using Retro Wash, a little bit of washing soda, and a little bit of Dawn and I'm using a lukewarm temperature. Now I almost always remove these covered buttons that come on these dresses because they are prone to rust, but with this one I was just going to do such a brief soak on that shrug that I left them on. I was taking a chance and you'll see here that I do pull that out after just about five minutes. But for the basic wash on the garments, just gently moving it around, that's going to kind of do the washing action on the two pieces in the bath. So after five minutes I took the shrug out and then I'm going to rinse that separately and leave the dress to continue soaking. So after I was done rinsing the shrug I decided to, I took a hair dryer and immediately dried the buttons so that it has worked for me in the past on a few occasions when I've done a really brief soak to prevent rust and so far so good. Perhaps I've just gotten lucky. But the dress soaked for a little bit longer. Take it out and I love seeing that dirty water because you know that you're getting the dress back to clean again. So I did a rinse in the tub and then I did another rinse because you want to make sure to get all of the detergent out and then hang it until it's no longer dripping. Then I did a towel roll but instead of my tight roll that I typically do, I kind of had to do more of a fold so that I didn't hurt the boning. So I noticed there was some discoloration at the underarms. So while it was damp I treated it with a combination of peroxide and Dawn which a lot of people think you can't use peroxide on colored fabrics. Well if they are colorfast you can and it worked really well to get rid of that underarm yellowing. So to air dry it I put it on a mannequin with some crinolines underneath and let her out in the air. Did some pressing on the wrong side of that taffeta underskirt and here is the before and after. It just freshened it up and just brightened up that pink just enough so it's closer to its original prettiness. Again I love that shade and I love it that this dress was worn for a wedding and that shrug style. I have had many types of these shoulder wraps over the years but this is definitely my favorite and she's ready once again 74 years later.