However the finished product came about, a wedding dress remains one of the most instantly recognisable dresses in Western culture.

Now, a remarkable collection of lovingly restored wedding dresses from the private collection of costume designer Marion Boyce is exhibited at Queensland’s Old Government House in Brisbane.

The Bowerbird and the Bride showcases more than 45 handmade wedding dresses — some from the finest lace and others from drawing-room curtains — all on display with all the necessary accoutrements: veils, gloves, flowers and head-dresses, even flower girl dresses.

Ms Boyce said the exhibition was a testament to the countless hours of careful, patient work put into wedding dresses from the 1880s to the 1970s.

She said the 1970s was a natural place for the exhibition to conclude, as the rise of ready-made dresses put paid to the days of mothers, aunts, and grandmothers contributing their seamstress skills to a bride’s dress.

“We live in such disposable society, we forget how much was made by the family or made by local artisans,” Ms Boyce said.

“Sometimes I see some of those frocks and they’re so incredibly beautiful, and someone’s spent a year lovingly making that frock.

“You just look at it and you see the love, hope and desire — it’s really quite moving.”

One such example is a dress made from parlour curtains: a 1930s-era example of how resourceful people became to create beauty out of very little, when coupons for material were scarce in post-War rationing.

“In every decade there’s a beginning, a middle and an end, style-wise,” Ms Boyce said.

“A lot of people go ‘okay the 1920s, it’s flappers’ — it’s not; it’s started somewhere and ended somewhere.

“It’s lovely seeing the changing shapes of the silhouettes and what drove that, whether it be depression, war, opulence, money — there are all sorts of things that dictate what goes on.”

Best known for her costume work on films such as The Dressmaker and television shows such as Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries, Ms Boyce said the collection came from her own searches, gifts from family and friends, and also from fans of her costume work.

The collection on display includes an 1880s broadcloth bridal dress in the style of European couturier Charles Worth, as well as a 1950s sunray pleated organza wedding dress showing the best of the post-War fashion boom.

Restoring many of the frocks to their full glory involved tracking down suitable material to create replacement veils, or matching differing materials from the same era to create flower girl dresses to accompany the white dresses.

“I collect buttons and laces and all sorts of things to reuse and to put into costumes, or put into creating stories and exhibitions and costumes for shows,” Ms Boyce said.

“I do believe they’re made to be repurposed. That’s what we’ve always done through our lives.

“A lot of those dresses have got lace from their mother’s frock or their grandmother’s frock.”

One of Ms Boyce’s own personal favourites in the collection is a “magnificent” 1930s bias-cut frock that stands in the entrance hall at the exhibition.

“It’s sublime in its elegance  — the cutting skills involved in that are just quite extraordinary,” she said.

In an exhibition that champions the home-made, the artisan and the power of memory and love, Ms Boyce said she hoped visitors would leave with a sense of honouring their own family heirlooms.

“I worry about the way we store memories and treasures these days,” she said.

“I remember being fascinated as a child listening to the stories and my mother bringing out the treasures, and you’re thinking about your great-aunts and thinking about your grandmother who was a master lace maker … being told the story through treasures.

“Now all of our memories are on iPhones. I hope that people look at their family treasures in a different way.”

The Bowerbird and The Bride is on display at Old Government House at QUT, until August 19. Tickets $26.