Is there any one era which you look back on with fond memories?

I'd say during the end of the Fifties and the start of the Sixties, you could wear things you'd call 'feminine'. The clothes were cut well and were very pretty. I've kept some of the dresses from that era simply because they're very pretty, I know they'll never come back into fashion of course but I couldn't think of throwing them away.

So why did you go for a blue wedding dress instead of the traditional white one?

Well, I felt a bit old and thought I may look a bit 'mutton dressed as lamb' if I'd worn a white dress. And also, I wouldn't have got much use out of a white dress afterwards but with this one I could take off the train and then wear it to go to dinners or to special occasions when my husband was guest speaker for different societies and so on.

And what about when your sister got married?

Yes, my mother made her wedding dress, in white satin, that wedding was in 1937. She spent about a fortnight making the dress, the only thing which was made professionally were the buttons, because there were about 30 of them right down the back.

Mari on a very special dress...

I bought this one when the queen came to Aberystwyth to open some sort of extension on the library. Tom was the chairman of some committee or other and we were going to be presented to her so we had to have new clothes didn't we? We went to Shrewsbury for a whole day around the shops and saw nothing, and then came back to Abersytwyth and went to Alison Coates' shop and she brought this dress out. It fitted like a glove, and this hat went with it. Aftewards I felt it was something worth keeping, from a historical point of view, but I don't know what will become of it after I'm gone.

Mari on her husband's clothes...

Here's my husband's little coat from when he was a child, his mother kept it. I keep everything that has anything to do with Tom, because now I've lost him, and he meant so much to me.

Mari on her appearance...

I like to think that I look decent and that my hair is neat, and I always wear a hat except in the middle of a hot summer because the top of my head gets cold! I see people these days and they probably think they've done their hair but so many of them look a state, especially those in the papers with their hair all over the place. It doesn't hurt me, but it does make me worry about a society that has let itself go to such a degree.