Ava Gardner married in a blue suit instead of a white dress: she kept the wedding orchids in an album, and the marriage to Artie Shaw lasted just over a year

On 17 October 1945, at Artie Shaw's villa in Beverly Hills, Ava Gardner got married without the white dress she had dreamed of. Instead she wore a simple blue suit, according to the Ava Gardner Museum. She was 22, he was 35. For her it was a second marriage, for him - a fifth.

Shaw was one of the best-known big-band leaders in America and had recently returned from the Second World War. They were introduced by Frances Heflin, who was her maid of honour at the wedding. The best man was one of Shaw's oldest friends. The honeymoon lasted a week at Lake Tahoe.

The most tender detail of that day outlived the marriage itself. On her suit Gardner wore cattleya orchids. They were later found dried and pressed in her personal album, and today they are part of the museum's collection in North Carolina. A woman who became a symbol of Hollywood glamour kept the flower, not the dress.

The marriage lasted a year and eight days - the divorce came on 25 October 1946. Before that Gardner had already divorced Mickey Rooney, whom she married in January 1942 and split from after about 16 months. Real fame came right then, with "The Killers" in 1946.

In her 1990 autobiography she wrote about the divorce from Shaw: "It was one of the great wounds of my life." And also: "Of my three husbands, Artie was the one I admired most." She described him as the first intelligent, intellectual man she had met, a man who completely dazzled her. "I adored the time I spent with Artie before we got married," she admitted.

Gardner's blue suit isn't a one-off. Wallis Simpson married in 1937 in a blue Mainbocher dress. Gardner herself, when she married Frank Sinatra in 1951, wore a violet dress. Decade after decade, women who didn't want to or couldn't go down the white route left behind weddings remembered longer than many white ones.

Macedonian weddings know how much the white dress weighs - and how many expectations it carries. Ava Gardner's story is a reminder of something easily forgotten while organising the big day: the dress goes back into the wardrobe, and what really remains is the flower in the album.