Abigail Kingston tries on the wedding dress that has been passed down in her family for more than 100 years. She will be the 11th bride to wear it when she weds later this month.

BETHLEHEM — The moment Bethlehem native Abigail Kingston got engaged, she knew she wanted to wear her mother's wedding gown.

But trying it on wasn't as simple as going to her mother's closet. She had to track it down first.

The 120-year-old family heirloom dress has been worn by 10 brides on her mother's side of the family, the last in 1991. Her mother Leslie Kingston knew where to start.

“The mother-of-the-last-bride has always been the keeper of the dress,” Leslie Kingston said.

Bride No. 4 Sara “Sally” Seiler Ogden, who wore the gown in 1960, happily shipped the gown to the Kingstons.

But when Abigail Kingston, 30, pulled the dress out of the box, she thought it was a lost cause.

The sleeves were disintegrating, the dress was filled with holes and the satin had turned an unattractive brown. And when the tall, thin bride tried on the dress, it was so short it was a crop top.

“I thought it's just not possible,” said Abigail Kingston, who recently moved from New York to Charlotte, N.C., with fiance Jason Curtis. “I'm just not going to be able to wear it.”

Thanks to 200 hours of painstaking restorations by Wilson Borough bridal designer Deborah LoPresti's salon, Kingston will don the dress on her wedding day on Oct. 17.

She will be the 11th bride in her family to wear the Victorian-era silk satin gown.

“It's not just the dress that's been handed down,” Leslie Kingston said. “It's the love.”

The couple plans to wed in an outdoor ceremony alongside Lake Nockamixon at the Lake House Inn in Perkasie, Bucks County.

The bride will wear a new gown for the ceremony and change into the vintage dress just for the cocktail hour.

“It is very, very fragile,” Abigail Kingston said.

Leslie Kingston is trying to persuade Ogden, who is her aunt, to make the journey for the wedding. It would bring things full circle.

She first saw the gown at Ogden's wedding. At the age of 5, she declared it the most beautiful dress she'd ever seen. And in 1977 Leslie Woodruff Kingston became bride No. 6.

Leslie Kingston's grandmother married in the 1920s. A flapper, she wanted nothing to do with the gown, Leslie Kingston said. But 50 years later her aunts began walking down the aisle in the dress, igniting the tradition. Then their daughters donned the gown for their wedding days.

When her daughter became engaged, Leslie Kingston said, she was thrilled she wanted to carry on the tradition. Finding LoPresti made it possible to restore the dress to its original condition.

“It is a magical wedding dress because she is the 11th bride to wear it,” Leslie Kingston said. “Who would think anything would last that long?”

The dress has not been meticulously preserved. Over its lifetime, it has only been dry-cleaned once. Worn by brides of all shapes and sizes, lace was used to patch up wear and tear. Sometimes it was used as an unfortunate embellishment.

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