White wedding dresses, associated with the Victorian period and growing in fashion even in the decades before the era’s namesake queen, were not yet ubiquitous in the middle of the 19th century. One mid-century bride who chose to wear a gray silk gown rather than white was Maria Griest (pronounced “Mariah”), born on March 7, … Continue reading The Blue and the Gray Dress: Maria Tyson’s 1863 Wedding Gown