Movie makers may be skipping a wedding scene in the big-screen version of Milton and Kitty Hershey’s love story.
Actors Finn Wittrock and Alexandra Daddario star in the “Hershey” biopic filmed primarily in and around Pittsburgh this summer. Daddario wore 54 custom-designed costumes, per the production company for the film, which is expected to premiere next year. But a wedding dress is not among them, according to Michelle McEnroe, The Hershey Co.’s associate manager of communications.
Granted, the real Catherine “Kitty” Sweeney likely didn’t wear anything overly bridal when she married a man who was cranking out caramels in Lancaster. The Hershey Community Archives contain several photos of the couple, but none from their wedding. The 26-year-old daughter of Irish Catholic immigrants and the 40-year-old from a strict Mennonite family were married in the rectory of St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City.
This hair brush is part of a larger silver toiletry set that Milton Hershey is believed to have given his new bride, Catherine “Kitty” Sweeney, when they married in 1898. The set was made by the Gorham Manufacturing Co. of Rhode Island. Each piece is sterling silver and made in the “Rose” pattern and engraved with “KSH.” The set is on display at The Hershey Story Museum.
“Imagine the shock Milton Hershey’s mother must have felt when in 1898 he arrived home in Lancaster … with an attractive young bride,” states the website for the Milton Hershey School, founded by the couple. “Fanny Hershey was not the only person he shocked; the people of the Hershey Caramel Company and Lancaster shared her surprise.”
Prevailing sentiment was that the newlyweds’ backgrounds were too different.
“Yet, Kitty mesmerized Milton with her auburn hair, quick laugh, and wit,” according to the website. “She needed his stability, and he needed her fresh, carefree outlook on life.”
A few pieces from a silver toiletry set, believed to be Hershey’s wedding present to his bride, are displayed at The Hershey Story museum. Other pieces are housed in a mansion overlooking Hershey’s original Dauphin County chocolate factory. Before moving there, the Hersheys occupied a South Queen Street Lancaster home that was later demolished.
Now, just in case any Hollywood costume designers ever need to know where other Lancaster County-linked celebrities married or what they wore, we’ve assembled some photos. They may offer cues for today’s couples, too.
Harriet Lane’s basque-waist wedding dress is now housed in the Smithsonian Institution. The basque waist is having a moment with some modern brides.
Harriet Lane and Elliot Johnston: 1866
When Harriet Lane became an orphan at age 11, her uncle James Buchanan of Lancaster became her guardian. And when Buchanan — a lifelong bachelor — became president of the United States, Lane moved with him to the White House to act as first lady.
“Her fashion influence started at the get-go,” reported Time magazine, which ranked Lane as one of the country’s 14 most fashionable first ladies and described her “scandalous” low-cut inauguration gown. “The dress was an instant hit, and bodices dropped an inch or two overnight. Mary Todd Lincoln copied the dress for her inauguration four years later.”
So, when Lane later married a wealthy Baltimore banker at a ceremony at her uncle’s Wheatland estate, her silk wedding gown probably would have been all over Instagram, had social media existed back then.
Something we might borrow today: Her gown may be of particular interest to those who followed the “Is the basque waist the 2025 version of the Mason jar?” TikTok debate. Lane embraced her era’s version of the elongated waist with her dress, which is now housed in the Smithsonian.
Lane was 35 when she got married, which was considered late in life at the time, per a LancasterHistory video. In part, that’s because Lane waited out the Civil War, which followed her uncle’s presidency. Today, the average age of couples getting married is 32, per a 2025 study by The Knot.
Lancasterian and Olympian Barney Ewell and his wife, Duella Ewell at a formal affair, copied photograph on Tuesday, July 15, 2025.
Barney Ewell and Duella Massey: 1944
Denise Ewell said if a wedding photo of her parents ever existed, she doesn’t have it in any of her old photo albums. Nor, she said, does her last living brother. The closest she’s got is one that she’s fond of from some other formal affair.
Ewell can see a bronze statue of her father anytime she’s on the 100 block of Lancaster’s North Queen Street. That honors the late runner Henry Norwood “Barney” Ewell, a J.P. McCaskey graduate who won gold in the 1948 Summer Olympics.
Ewell’s college status kept him out of the Army for a time at the start of World War II, according to Jeremiah Miller’s documentary “Breaking Through: The Barney Ewell Story.” He kept setting running records while at Penn State, which is where he met Duella Massey, a nanny who moved from North Carolina to Pennsylvania with her doctor employer and family.
Ewell eventually went into the Army and was assigned to run the sports center at what was then Camp Lee in Virginia, according to the documentary. In July 1944, he was transferred to what was then Fort Pickett. That same month he married Massey at a ceremony in Wilmington, Delaware, per the documentary.
Denise Ewell and her brother, Patrick Ewell, look through a photo album full of photos and stories about their father, Olympian Barney Ewell on Tuesday, July 15, 2025.
Given the timing and her father’s low-key demeanor, their marriage likely was not an elaborate affair, Denise Ewell says. But her mother did have class. Ewell says she could easily imagine her mother wearing a hat or a great pair of earrings on that July day. And possibly gloves. Years later, she’d make sure her only daughter always wore a pair to church.
Something we might borrow today: Gloves have popped up in some recent high-profile unions. For example, actor Hailee Steinfeld wore sheer opera gloves at her wedding in May.
Jim and Mim Herr on their wedding day in 1947.
Jim Herr and Mim Hershey: 1947
Jim Herr grew up on a farm in Willow Street. Miriam “Mim” Hershey grew up on a farm in Paradise. They got engaged in 1946, the same year that Jim Herr bought a small Lancaster potato chip company from which he created Herr’s, a major snack player now based in Chester County’s Nottingham. Jim proposed while the couple were on a date at the West Lampeter Farm Show, according to “Life with Flavor,” which Herr wrote with co-authors Bruce Mowday and June Herr Gunden.
“We looked at cows and farm equipment and ate some ice cream and then I just popped the question!” he wrote. “I know it wasn’t very romantic, but it worked. She said yes!”
The Herrs had been married for 65 years when Jim died in 2012. Mim followed in 2016. A page from her diary, included in the book, describes their wedding at her parents’ farm.
“Shortly after 7:30 the cooks, consisting mostly of neighbors, arrived and soon there was the wonderful sound of friendly hurrying about setting tables, preparing food, arranging flowers, etc.,” she wrote. “Finally 11:00 came, the hour we had so happily awaited. The trio began singing and — we were married. Truly, it was the happiest moment of our life.”
Something we might borrow today: Probably not their sendoff. “Amid farewells, and a due amount of confetti, crepe paper and tin cans, we left for our 2 wks. honeymoon,” Mim Herr wrote in her diary. These days most, if not all, Lancaster County wedding venues are going to say no to confetti.
“For us, it is because it gets caught in between the floorboards and we can’t get it out,” says Debbie Helm, owner of Britain Hill Venue & Vineyard in Little Britain Township. “It is also not environmentally friendly when used outside.” Helm does allow flower petals, bubbles and the like.
Dick and Ethel Winters’ 1948 wedding photo is part of a collection at the Hershey-Derry Township Historical Society.
Dick Winters and Ethel Estoppey: 1948
If you’ve seen the 2001 miniseries “Band of Brothers,” you’ll likely remember a closing scene in which the actor playing Maj. Richard D. “Dick” Winters — who was born in Lancaster and grew up largely in Ephrata — sits with his friend Lewis Nixon and watches fellow Easy Company soldiers play baseball. Viewers learn where the men ended up after World War II.
Winters accepted a job offer at Nixon Nitration Works in New Jersey. Not mentioned in the show was the fact that New Jersey is where Winters would meet and marry Ethel Estoppey.
The couple eventually moved to a farm near Hershey, described in that baseball scene as “a peaceful little corner of the world.” Ethel missed privacy after “Band of Brothers” came out, according to obituaries following her death, a year after her husband, in 2012. But she was moved to help properly document Winters’ life. Their wedding photo is included in a collection she helped assemble for The Hershey-Derry Township Historical Society.
Something we might borrow today: Check out her oversized headband. Models wearing ones that look a bit like that showed off Tony Ward’s fall 2025 bridal collection and Reem Acra’s Signature collection for spring 2026.
Evelyn Ay Sempier and Carl Sempier on their wedding day in 1954.
Evelyn Ay and Carl Sempier: 1954
It’s been more than seven decades since someone from Pennsylvania wore the arguably most famous pageant crown. Evelyn Ay — a long-ago Lancaster County Tobacco Queen — became Miss America 1954 during a pageant in Atlantic City in late 1953.
When the pageant was televised for the first time in September 1954, folks across the country watched Ay crown her successor and eventual lifelong friend, Lee Meriwether, who went on to an acting career that included roles like Catwoman in 1966’s “Batman.” Meriwether is godmother to one of the Ephrata High School graduate’s daughters, Stacy Sempier, who lives outside Philadelphia.
The gown that Evelyn Ay wore during that televised pageant? She wore it again a couple of months later at Trinity Lutheran Church in Ephrata when she married Carl Sempier, a Naval flight officer. (Their honeymoon was a cross-country drive to Texas where the groom was training.) Their nuptials were notable in a community that threw Ay a parade after her win.
“The wedding was a big celebration too as the people of Ephrata felt that ‘Evie’ was their own and they celebrated her day,” Stacy Sempier writes in an email. “That’s what small town America is all about!”
Something we might borrow today: Ay made her pageant gown more bridal by adding elegant lace sleeves and a lace overlay. The Knot placed lace toppers among its top 10 wedding dress trends for 2026. “For those saying ‘I do’ in a church, temple or mosque, they’re … a great way to make a strapless or sleeveless dress more modest,” writes Sofia Deeb, The Knot’s assistant fashion commerce editor.
