But 22-year-old Elizabeth Mills decided that her mother Emily’s dress - with a few ingenious adjustments - would work perfectly for her June 25 nuptials.

And, what’s more unusual: Before the dress belonged to Emily, HER mother wore it.

‘‘I went into the store to buy a suit,’’ remembers grandmother Martha Wherry, 76, widowed three years ago after 51 years of marriage.

That long-ago shopping day in 1952 was the beginning of a tri-generational tradition.

This is the story of how a 53-year-old gown was passed down from mother to daughter to granddaughter, updated and made wedding-ready.

Wherry, then 22, tried on the $55 postwar synthetic satin dress with long sleeves and lace, and she loved it. The wedding pictures show a beautiful brunette with a heart-shaped face beaming over the high neckline.

Thirty years later, Wherry’s daughter Emily, then 19, brought the dress down from the attic. She left it in its original state for her own wedding, but bought a new veil and Juliet cap headpiece (still somewhat de rigeur in 1982).

As Elizabeth was growing up, she loved trying on The Dress and knew she wanted to wear it at her own wedding. But when that time came, she faced a few hurdles.

‘‘It stopped fitting me when I was 12,’’ Elizabeth said. ‘‘I couldn’t get it over my head.’’

‘‘She’s built differently from the two of us,’’ Wherry said. ‘‘We’re taller and thinner. I always wished I had broad shoulders like she has.’’

Dress designer Jeanne Dudley Smith saw other problems - not the least of which was that the dress looked like it had been around since the Truman administration, which it had.

‘‘Dresses can get like a husband who’s worn out and old - the people who love him don’t see him that way,’’ she said.

In addition, she said, the color, style and material were wrong for Elizabeth.

‘‘It was choking her neckline and mashing her bosom, and it made her look fat. She’s not. It had gathers around the waist, which is the most unattractive thing a person can deal with unless they’re 80 pounds,’’ she said.

To remedy all this, Smith (who says that many young women rework vintage, family wedding gowns) found a floor-length base dress with a scoop neck and fitted, princess A-line tapering down to a full skirt. Then she set to work melding the old dress - almost all of it - with the new.

First, she cut off the neck and created a Renaissance-inspired collar, superimposing the original lace and beading over it.

She also took 12 inches of the old material and put it on the bottom of the new dress, blending old lace and new beading, then attached the train with new lace that almost exactly matched the old in shade and pattern (‘‘antique white’’ is quite popular now).

The veil is Emily’s, but the Juliet cap had to go.

‘‘Elizabeth is wearing a headpiece of hand-shaped, hand-painted porcelain flowers, entwined with crystals and pearls,’’ Smith said.

And the finishing touch: the re-invented dress now has the names and wedding dates of all three brides embroidered into it. And there’s room for more.

The dress isn’t the only thing that’s changed over three generations - so have the weddings and engagements. Emily dated her fiance for three years, while Wherry met her husband four months before signing on for life.

And the vows have become more of a production.

‘‘Back then, you just told the minister, went to the church, and got married, (whereas) Elizabeth’s been working on this since October,’’ Wherry said.

‘‘In those days, your friends pitched in to help you. You didn’t have a caterer or bridal showers, the way you do now. Elizabeth’s shower was so pretty, I may have to get married all over again.’’

When Emily Mills said ‘‘I do,’’ things were only a little more complex.

‘‘It was right before everybody started having the big receptions,’’ she said. ‘‘We had cake, punch and mints in the church fellowship hall, and that was about it.’’

The groom’s role, however, remains the same.

‘‘They still do nothing,’’ Elizabeth said, making her mother and grandmother laugh. ‘‘Although mine did want to hold the (scanner) gun when we registered for gifts.’’

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HOW TO PRESERVE A WEDDING GOWN

-Have the dress cleaned after the honeymoon, at the latest. Wet cleaning and hand cleaning are best - your bridal salon may be able to refer you to a specialist who does dry cleaning.

‘‘There are times when you have to do all three steps to get a gown clean,’’ said Tripp Penninger of Tripp’s Fine Cleaners in Columbia, S.C. ‘‘The fresher the stain, the easier it is to remove.’’

-Beware of set gown-cleaning prices. Every gown is unique; every gown takes a different amount of time to process and clean, Penninger said.

-Make sure you ask the cleaner for a sugar-stain treatment using an ultraviolet light to detect every spot, as invisible champagne or sugar stains (white wine, cake icing) will caramelize and look yellow-brown when you take the dress out of the box in 10 or 20 years.

-Inspect the dress after cleaning. Then, make sure the cleaner wraps it in acid-free, archival-quality paper and stores it in an acid-free box. Put the box somewhere dry - ‘‘never in an attic, never in a basement, never in an exterior-walled closet or garage,’’ Penninger said.

-Don’t hang up the gown - that will stretch it out of shape. Keep it flat.

-Wedding gowns must be protected from light and air but not sealed in an airtight package. It’s OK to take your dress out every now and again - especially if your daughter or granddaughter wants to try it on. Tripp recommends taking the dress out annually (while wearing cotton gloves), refluffing the tissue and refolding the dress along new lines to avoid permanent creases.