Search:

MINNEAPOLIS—Emily Koski still remembers her mother’s sweet smell and the pink Asian print of the robe she wore in the kitchen while Emily and her brother got ready for school each morning.

She has a harder time remembering what it felt like to hold her mother’s hand or sit on her lap. She was just 8 when her mother, Barbara Hofstede, died of breast cancer.

Two years later, Emily’s father, former Minneapolis mayor Al Hofstede, proposed to Emma Hild, a schoolteacher and former nun. Emma moved from Chicago to Minneapolis to marry him and help raise the children. She formally adopted Emily and her brother, Al, Jr.

So when Emily, now 28, got married a year ago, she was acutely aware of the presence of both of the women she’s called “Mom.” She walked down the aisle with her parents, wearing a gown fashioned from Emma’s wedding dress and the liner and veil from Barbara’s.

“It’s a once in a lifetime opportunity to do something like this to honor your mothers, to thank them for everything that they’ve done. You can say thank you and write a card, but to take pieces of their past and make them part of our present and future—you could never take that away.”

As a witness at Emma and Al’s wedding, Emily had insisted on wearing a black and white dress with an all-the-rage-of-1988 pouffy skirt.

“Emily was excited to have a mother to help her pick out her dress and get her makeup done, and I was really too new here and in love to start getting the nuances of what it was really like to have your father marry someone new,” Emma says.

When Emily and Mike Koski started planning their own wedding, they incorporated elements of Al and Emma’s. Both couples were married at St. Olaf church by Al’s brother, John Hofstede, and walked to local restaurants for a reception.

But when Emily started shopping for a wedding dress, the off-the-rack gowns didn’t feel right—especially after she described one to a friend and found out the friend had picked the same dress for her own wedding.

So she went home and tried on Emma’s wedding dress. The 1920s, flapper style didn’t suit her, but she was enamored of the beadwork.

She also found Barbara’s dress in storage at a friend’s house, thrown into a box unwashed. Feeling the weight of the full-length veil and ’70s-era polyester, she couldn’t quite envision herself walking down the aisle in a dress that made her feel like an angel.

Maybe, she thought, there was a way to combine the unique elements of both gowns.

She took a closer look at the beadwork on Emma’s dress, and washed Barbara’s veil with a gentle cleanser. Then she called designer Joy Teiken.

Teiken’s own mother had died of breast cancer.

“Emily’s story kind of fit my story, and I liked the idea of old combined with new,” Teiken says.

After months of collaborating, the beadwork from Emma’s dress became the bodice of a strapless silk gown worn over Barbara’s liner. Barbara’s veil hung to the floor.

When Emily walked down the aisle, a downpour started outside. Afterward, the sky turned a beautiful shade of green as the guests walked to the reception.

“I know she’s there,” Emily remembers thinking. “I know she’s helping out.” When they reached the restaurant, it stormed again.

The gown now lies in the box Emily put it in the night of her wedding.