Wedding dress : Miss Isabel Margaret Platt-Hepworth

Floor length unlined ivory silk taffeta wedding dress, woven through with a pattern of ivory and silver daisies. The back bodice is cut from a single piece and is shaped by darts at the neck and waist. The front of the dress opens at a high neck with a soft fold down collar and extends to the bottom of the broad pointed waistband. A band on either side of the opening is cut in one piece with the waistband. Twenty-five small self-fabric covered buttons and rouleaus fasten the front of the dress. Each side of the front opening is lined with ivory silk to support the weight of the buttons. The panels on each side of the front bodice are gathered down the length of the centre front and along the waist to shape the bust. The short puffed sleeves are heavily gathered. The head of each sleeve has a square profile which is held out from the shoulder seam by a piece of plain white taffeta sewn inside the seam. There is a loose 'wing' of fabric on the outside of each sleeve, further accentuating the square effect. They have been created by sewing a broad dart up the outer edge of the sleeve. The four gore skirt flares to a semi-circle at the hem and is finished with a rolled edge.

On 22 December 1939, 24 year old Isabel Margaret Platt-Hepworth married Captain Alfred Thomas Jakins Bell at St Mark's Church, Darling Point with a reception held afterwards at Rose Bay Golf Club. Their marriage came 10 days after Bell proposed and was organised quickly as he was expecting to be posted on overseas service soon afterwards. Isabel made her own wedding dress and during the remaining war years the dress was worn by five other brides as she lent it to friends restricted by clothes and fabric rationing.

Captain Bell, born in 1913, was a regular army officer from Melbourne, trained at Duntroon and educated in Civil Engineering at Sydney University. It was during his years in Sydney, where he also studied Japanese, that he met Isabel, daughter of a Sydney solicitor. Before her marriage, Isabel worked in her father's office and had earlier won a scholarship to study law at Sydney University. Her father however believed they were too well-off to allow her to accept the scholarship and she never furthered her studies.

In the late 1930s Bell joined the British Army in India to gain experience and it was on the ship home in 1939 that news of war reached him. He subsequently enlisted in the Second AIF on 25 October and was assigned the number VX41. Based in Melbourne as adjutant to Colonel Steele, Commander Royal Engineers of 6 Division, Bell made frequent trips to Sydney to oversee the formation of 2/1 Field Company. It was on one of these trips in mid December that he proposed to Isabel and they were married the next time his work took him north. On the evening of their wedding they took the train back to Melbourne and Isabel moved in with her mother-in-law. Shortly afterwards her husband was posted overseas. Bell served in Palestine, Greece, Crete and Syria before returning home briefly before joining the New Guinea campaign. After the war Bell volunteered to serve with BCOF and then remained in the Army until 1967. He retired with the rank of Brigadier.