Time crashing my grandmother's bridal shower

Using AI to reimagine the past

The first time I posted about using AI to reimagine the past, I received a lot of positive feedback from my family members, who are some of my best supporters. Given their interest, I thought it would be fun to use AI to produce images of another party, one of significance to all of us: my grandmother’s bridal shower.

Before Facebook there were newspapers

The details of my grandmother’s bridal shower are one of a few new things I learned about her when I looked her up on newspapers.com. Back in the day, travel itineraries and parties were well documented in the society pages of newspapers, so searching for an ancestor feels a bit like looking through status highlights from a social media page.

I strongly recommend searching for your older relatives in a newspaper database, although I would caution that most news is not good news. For example, I also discovered that about a year before my grandmother was married she had gold jewelry stolen off of her desk at work.

The setting

My grandmother’s bridal shower was held at her sister’s home in Northern Ohio in January 1948. I started producing images from the party by telling AI about the event, the location, and the time period.

Image created with ChapGPT 4o and DALL-E

The decor

I was hoping to recreate a couple of specific details about the party that were described in the news article:

“Dainty refreshments were served to 15 guests at a long table appointed in pink and white. A crystal vase of pink and white carnations flanked on either side by crystal two-branched candelabra with lighted tapers formed the centerpiece.” -The Evening Independent, 29 Jan 1948, p. 7

Image created with ChapGPT 4o and DALL-E

I especially wanted to nail the details of the center piece: a crystal vase with a candelabra on either side holding two tapered candles each. I asked AI for four candles total but was not able to produce the desired outcome.

Images created with ChapGPT 4o and DALL-E

The favors and the games

The newspaper article reports that the “[f]avors were individual corsages” and “[g]ames of 500 and bingo were the evening’s diversions.” I wasn’t familiar with 500, but I searched and it seems it is a variant of Euchre, a popular Midwestern card game, which I know my grandparents played with my parents.

Telling AI about the bingo and the corsages resulted in my favorite picture of the event. The woman in the bottom right corner reminds me of my grandmother, and I love how Don Draper from Mad Men seems to have snuck into the party.

Image created with ChapGPT 4o and DALL-E

Do you have any events your grandparents attended that you’d like to see recreated?

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