3 generations of brides wore the same wedding dress from 1961

At the Halloween party, Tafelski was dressed as the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg while Ostrowski went as Ron Burgundy from "Anchorman." Although the couple met in October 2015, they didn't start officially dating until February 2016, Tafelski told Insider.

"We started chatting that night and had a great connection. Since then, we've always loved Halloween," she said.

After buying a house in 2017, the couple decided they would start throwing annual Halloween parties as an homage to how they met and their love for the holiday.

Tafelski told Insider she had a feeling that Ostrowski was going to propose during their Halloween party in 2019, but he didn't, so she was caught totally off guard when he got down on one knee a few days later.

"He was showing everyone the ring and I had no idea," she said.

Ostrowski designed a scavenger hunt across Baltimore, Maryland, for the proposal. The clues led to places that were important to them in their relationship. When they arrived at the final place, the Federal Hill Park, he had their family and friends waiting.

"He proposed at sunset and then we went out to celebrate with everyone we loved," Tafelski said.

Tafelski told Insider that when she first saw a picture of her mom's wedding dress, she knew she would "never" wear the dress because it didn't fit her style.

But Tafelski wasn't able to have the traditional shopping experience due to the pandemic, so her mother's wedding dress turned out to be the perfect option.

Kauffman added statement sleeves and had a hoop skirt removed from her mother Margaret Ann McCarty's original dress.

"My mom saw that my grandmother kept the dress, and when she tried it on in high school, she fell in love with it," Tafelski said.

Kauffman had originally planned to wear the wedding dress to a Halloween party with her now-husband, but the zipper broke, so she had to change costumes.

"She said it was some divine intervention that her future husband didn't see her in that dress," Tafelski said.

While Tafelski said she disliked her mother's altered version of the dress, she was a fan of the original look her grandmother wore in 1961 — and she knew she wanted something similar.

At the time, McCarty's dress was so popular that two more brides wore the same one a week later, according to Lancaster Online.

She paired the dress with a tiara and a simple veil.

Tafelski took her mother's version of the dress to Juliya's Custom Tailoring in Maryland. The seamstress said the lace sleeves were falling apart, so they would have to be removed.

She also took some fabric out of the skirt to make it less full and made the dress a bit bigger to fit Tafelski. Luckily, there was enough fabric left to alter the dress seamlessly.

"She did a really good job of making it feel like mine while still preserving the integrity of the original dress," Tafelski said. "Each time we went back, it felt more and more like mine and I got more and more excited."

When Tafelski's mom and dad saw her in the dress for the first time, they were so happy that she had now become the third generation to wear it.

"Family is very important to us, and knowing that I chose to incorporate such a special piece of family history into my wedding day made them very happy, and I think proud," Tafelski said.

As McCarty's first grandchild, Tafelski said she was honored to have been the one to wear her grandmother's dress. But she wanted to make sure her other relatives had a piece of the gown, so she gave parts of the lace sleeves to her mom's siblings and her cousins.

Tafelski said that she knows her grandmother, who died in 2000, would be really happy to have seen her in the dress.

"We also all got married in the same church, so it was a special continuation of that, too," she said.

Tafelski added that getting to wear the dress felt like having a piece of good luck with her because it's also a symbol of her parent's marriage.

"They've always been a role model to me of what I wanted my future marriage to look like, and I hope to have something as wonderful as they do," she said.

Tafelski's younger sister, Elizabeth, died in March 2020 at the age of 25. The two had just been looking at wedding venues together the week before the COVID-19 lockdowns.

Since the material from Elizabeth's dress wasn't needed to alter Tafelski's dress, the seamstress added some of the lace to a jacket instead. Tafelski ended up wearing the jacket to the rehearsal dinner and reception.

"It's very pretty and sweet. I'm sure there will be a right time to wear it again or maybe lend it out to someone on an important day," Tafelski said.

Now that she's married, Tafelski said her plan is to preserve her wedding dress so it can be used for something else in the future. She also said she wants to keep the tradition and story of her grandmother's original look alive.