On May 21, 1945 - exactly 81 years ago - Hollywood star Lauren Bacall, 20, and Humphrey Bogart, 45, married at Malabar Farm in Ohio, a 20-room country estate belonging to novelist Louis Bromfield. It was an unusual wedding for the 1940s, in an era when Hollywood mostly presented itself as glamour, not quiet.

Bacall broke with tradition - instead of a white wedding dress, she wore a beige wool suit with geometric shoulders. The choice wasn't a feminist statement, it was practicality - wartime economy and the couple's tempo forced them to skip the ceremony tropes. She also carried a simple bouquet of white flowers and wore her signature hair with a sharp centre parting.

According to Life magazine, Bogart drank a martini before exchanging vows and whispered "Oh, baby" to his bride. That single "Oh, baby" is still among the most-quoted moments from Hollywood weddings - not for the romance, but for the style of a man who behaved naturally in moments when most men turn into actors.

The couple met on the set of "To Have and Have Not" in 1944 - she was 19, he was 44. Bacall later admitted: "I often think how lucky I was. I knew everyone worth knowing, because I was married to him." They had two children, Stephen and Leslie, and stayed married for 12 years until Bogart's death in 1957 from oesophageal cancer.

For anyone planning a wedding today and choosing style over tradition - Lauren Bacall is the original template. Not a wedding dress kept in a box after the ceremony. Not symbols bought for a photograph. A wedding for two specific people, coloured by a specific moment in a specific time - wartime 1945, when white silks were for those who had the money for them.