The Wheel of Life by Ellen Glasgow

Having decided that Laura was to be married on the nineteenth of December, Mrs. Payne had gathered not only the invitations, but the entire trousseau into the house three weeks before the date upon which she had fixed. Laura, who had at first entered enthusiastically into the question of clothes, had shown during the last fortnight an indifference which was almost an open avoidance of the subject; and the lively old lady was forced to conduct an unsupported campaign against dressmakers and milliners.

"It's fortunate, to put it mildly, my dear, that you have me to attend to such matters," she remarked one day, "or you would most likely have started on your wedding journey a dowd -- and there can be no happy marriage," she concluded with caustic philosophy, "which is not founded upon a carefully selected trousseau."