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Icons of Palm Beach

The Gown Carl Dean Kept: Dolly Parton's 1966 Wedding Dress Comes Out of the Trunk

· 1 min read
Beautifully arranged outdoor garden party table with floral centerpieces and elegant place settings.
Photo by Birtakımhisler on Pexels

Every house on the island has a cedar closet or a garment bag that nobody has unzipped in years. In 2024 Dolly Parton's turned out to be a trunk belonging to her husband, Carl Dean, and inside it was the dress she married him in back in 1966. For close to six decades nobody had known where that dress was. The one that came out of the trunk does not look like the dress people had pictured. For anyone who has ever opened a box of family heirlooms in the off-season, the lesson is simple: the most precious things in a marriage are sometimes the ones a husband quietly keeps.

With reporting from Vanity Fair.

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