ST. PETERSBURG
The young women milled around in the sunlit courtyard, fixing each other's veils and curls.
Each wore a wedding dress from a different era: a billowing skirt in the lavish style of Marie Antoinette; a loose 1920s shift with a gauzy golden overlay.
For technical theatre students used to being invisible — building sets, mending costumes, choreographing lights — Sunday was a chance to step into the limelight, modeling their work while raising much-needed money.
"It's a great change of scenery," said Samantha Schroeder, 16, a junior at the Pinellas County Center for the Arts at Gibbs High School. "We typically only talk to other technicians and the director. Now we actually get to be the face of the program."
The reason for the students' showcase at a St. Petersburg bridal show this weekend was unearthed sometime last fall in a cluttered Gibbs storage room.
Technical theatre instructor Trish Kelley was rummaging through old costumes, hoping to clear out space, when somebody opened a big gray bin.
Inside, they found dozens of wedding dresses, yellowed with age and tightly rolled. Many still had their original tags. Based on the construction, Kelley guessed they dated to the mid 1960s through mid 1970s.
In six more bins, they found still more dresses — 98 in all. Students tried them on.
"They said, 'Oh, they look old,' " Kelley said. "But when they put them on, they saw how pretty they are."
Selling the vintage dresses for a few hundred dollars each, they realized, could raise money to replace the program's long-outdated light and sound equipment. And they could demonstrate their behind-the-scenes work by modeling the program's costume finery, in wedding dresses ranging from the Elizabethan era to the 1970s.
Each student researched her dress' place in history to pair it with makeup and accessories, such as thick white face paint, long strands of pearls and lace-up white boots.
Emily Wilson, 18, a senior, said she wishes audience members appreciated the scope of technical work.
"They go to a show, and they go, 'Oh, so beautiful,' but they don't really know what they're looking at," she said. "They don't realize that what made the costumes sparkle is the way the lightning designers set it up."
Katrina Babitzke, 18, also a senior, wore a massive feathered headdress with her 1700s-style gown. She said lighting brings a show to life, amplifying the need for new equipment.
"You can change the audience's whole perspective," she said. "It sets the mood for everything."
Outside, bridal show visitors thumbed through the racks of thin, lacy vintage dresses and tried them on in a small changing tent. The students in their gowns floated in and out of the dark, clamorous event space, lit in deep purple, turning head after head.
Contact Claire McNeill at cmcneill@tampabay.com or (727) 893-8321.