I did get to keep the wedding dresses from 'Runaway Bride'.

In the words of Julia Roberts, “I did get to keep the wedding dresses from Runaway Bride. They're all boxed up in my garage. I've never opened them. It'll be fun one day when Hazel is taller. She can play dress-up with her friends,” we find a reflection on memory, inheritance, and the passage of time. The wedding dresses, symbols of cinematic storytelling, are not merely costumes but vessels of history, stored away like treasures awaiting rediscovery. Though boxed and untouched, they carry with them the echo of laughter, performance, and the dreams woven into their fabric.

Her words remind us that the artifacts of art can transcend their moment. What was once worn for a film becomes tomorrow’s heirloom, a relic not of a literal wedding but of imagination, creativity, and joy. To keep these dresses is to preserve a fragment of her past, yet she does not keep them for herself, but for Hazel, her daughter. The act transforms memory into gift, turning relics of performance into playthings of the next generation.

History offers us the tale of heirloom garments, such as the coronation robes of monarchs, passed down from parent to child. These garments were not only finery, but symbols of continuity, worn by new rulers to remind the world that they were part of an unbroken chain. Roberts’s dresses, though not robes of power, carry a similar spirit. For when Hazel and her friends wear them in play, they step into the lineage of storytelling, of cinema, and of a mother’s legacy.

There is also wisdom in her choice not to open the boxes. In this restraint lies reverence, as though she knows that timing is sacred. To wait until Hazel is grown enough to cherish them transforms the dresses from ordinary fabric into symbols of anticipation, teaching us that some joys are made greater by patience. Dress-up, in this light, is no trivial amusement but a rite of imagination, where children practice the roles and dreams of adulthood in the safe space of play.

Thus, let this teaching endure: preserve the relics of joy, for they may become treasures to those who come after. A wedding dress from a film, a costume worn in laughter, may one day inspire wonder in a child. Roberts shows us that legacy is not only the passing down of wealth or wisdom, but of stories, objects, and memories that carry the spirit of love. In such small things, the play of children becomes the continuation of art, and imagination becomes eternal.