Three Best Friends All Wore the Same Wedding Dress in the 1960s. Now It’s Being Passed on Again

Ima Gay Daniels, Betty Sparks and Angie Vanderpool first met in the 1950s as roommates in Washington, D.C., after landing jobs connected to the FBI, The Chronicle of Mt. Juliet reported. What began as a practical living arrangement quickly turned into a lifelong bond — one that would later shape a memorable tradition across all three of their weddings.

“All three of us girls were clerical employees right out of high school,” Daniels said. “Betty and I worked with the FBI identification division. My job after the first few weeks was doing fingerprint searches and classifying fingerprints. It was miles of files. Angie worked in the Justice Building under Attorney General Robert Kennedy and did steno and typing.”

One day, gathered in Sparks’ bedroom in their three-floor condo, the friends came up with an agreement: whoever married first would choose her wedding dress — and then pass it to the next bride, and then to the last.

Daniels was the first to marry. She wed Ken Elkins on July 28, 1962, she told The Chronicle. Elkins, she recalled, “had a car and would take me and my roommates bowling and skating,” and at some point, she realized she didn’t want to date anyone else.

When it was time to plan the wedding, Daniels bought the gown that would ultimately be shared by all three friends for $175. Her two roommates each made their own bridesmaid dresses for the occasion.

Next came Sparks, who married Lee Troutwine on Dec. 19, 1964. Daniels couldn’t make it to the ceremony — she had recently given birth — so she mailed the dress to her friend instead.

Vanderpool was the last of the trio to wear it when she married Wayne Pollock on April 18, 1970. By then, she had lost weight while “working three jobs,” Daniels said, and Vanderpool wanted to check with her friends before altering the gown from its original size 5 down to a size 3.

“I got the dress back and had it hermetically cleaned and sealed so it would not color,” Daniels said. “It stayed under my bed double boxed.”

Over the years, the three women scattered across different parts of the country, but they stayed close — keeping in touch often and trying to reunite multiple times each year, along with their husbands.

For decades, the dress remained carefully stored away. That changed when Vanderpool’s teenage granddaughter told her she hoped to wear it someday for her own wedding. The idea moved Vanderpool — and offered the gown a chance to become more than just a shared memory.

Not long after, the three couples — who collectively have 179 years of marriage between them — gathered to see the dress again and officially place it into Vanderpool’s care until the day her granddaughter walks down the aisle.

“When we opened it up, it was sealed, and I thought, ‘Oh my, I can’t believe 55 years have passed since I wore that dress,’” Vanderpool said. “I have it now. My granddaughters have a bedroom upstairs [for when they visit], and it’s under the bed.”