Elizabeth Wray never had very much as a young woman, having grown up in the east end of London between the wars, starting work at 14 to support her younger siblings when their mother died of septicaemia after an abortion.

But when she married in 1938, and for the rest of her long life, she was very proud of her wedding dress.

Like many of her background, Betty, as she was known, made her own gown for her wedding to the postal worker James Wray, using a relatively inexpensive artificial silk. She was a talented dressmaker, and her cousin Dorothy, who worked for the London couturier Norman Hartnell, already a favourite of the royal family, added some fine beadwork detailing to the collar and sleeves.

Betty Wray in the 1940s. Photograph: Museum of London

It was, in other words, “a rather upmarket dress for their class of people”, recalls her daughter Pamela Ackers. So special, in fact, that throughout the second world war and immediately afterwards, Wray would loan it to four other brides. Until her death in 2000 at the age of 86, it remained one of her most cherished possessions.

This month, 80 years after it was made, the dress that was worn by five brides will be the centre of attention again, as part of a display at the Museum of London.

The wedding dress has been donated to the Museum of London. Photograph: Martin Godwin/The Guardian

It is far from the finest garment in the museum’s 23,000-strong dress collection, but according to the senior fashion curator Beatrice Behlen, it is the story of Wray’s dress that makes it “museum quality”.

“As a museum, we need an object to tell a story, and you can tell so many things from this dress.” It speaks of how people lived during the war, she says, and the history of London dressmaking, the use of artificial fabrics, and the fashions of the pre-war period.

For Hartnell’s own dresses, the stories of their royal and wealthy owners are often preserved, says Behlen, “whereas if the family hadn’t given this dress to a museum, in 50 years no one would probably know about this. But this dress will now remain in the museum, and people will know about this family and what happened to them.”

The dress had its first outing on 21 August 1938, for the Wrays’ wedding in Palmers Green, north London. Only four guests were present, one of whom was Dorothy, and the entire wedding party is captured in a photograph of the day, which also shows the bride’s long, silk tulle veil and headdress of wax orange blossom flowers, both of which have also been acquired by the museum.

Four years later, in 1942, Betty Wray’s younger sister Lilian married Bob Murray in Stoke Newington. She wore the same dress and veil, while he was in his RAF uniform.

Betty Wray’s younger sister Lilian on her wedding day in Stoke Newington in 1942. Photograph: Museum of London

A third family photograph shows another outing for the dress when Betty Wray’s younger brother Harry, beaming broadly, married Moyra Farr in 1947. He had been liberated two years earlier from a Japanese prisoner of war camp where he had spent four years.

There were also two other weddings. “I always grew up knowing the story,” says Ackers. “Because materials were so short, my mum loaned the dress to two ladies who she worked with at the Mount Pleasant post office during the war.”

With Betty Wray’s death, however, their details have been lost; both the family and the museum hope relatives of the other brides might recognise the dress and come forward.

It will go on display on 13 December as part of an exhibition of new acquisitions, which also include the original Victorian bell of Holloway prison that sounded during the incarceration of hundreds of suffragettes, a fourth-century Roman oil lamp found by the Thames, and a 16th-century clay pipe mould.

The dress was last worn by Moyra Farr in 1947. Photograph: Museum of London

Though Betty and James Wray remained together until his death in 1998, “I would not call it, sadly, a good marriage over the years,” says Ackers. Because her mother was in service, she says, they had very little time to spend together while they were courting. “I just think they weren’t suited.”

“But the actual day,” she says, “when I look at the photo of their wedding day, I think they were full of hope and promise. And of course, life is different now.

“It’s 104 years since they were both born. Such a different world, isn’t it?”