Incorporating mom's wedding dress/pics

While I love the ideas that I’ve seen, my mom’s first wedding ended in divorce and my IL are not happily married. Therefore we forgo tying in anything from those weddings.

Could you ask your mom for something special/meaningful to her that you could "carry with you" that day? When I got married, I sent a note to each of my aunts and asked if they could be part of my "something borrowed" by sending me something that I could incorporate into my bouquet when I walked down the aisle, so that I could carry their wisdom with me because they are so important to me. So for example, one of my aunts gave me a cross from a necklace that she wore on her wedding day, which I then sewed onto fabric that I wrapped around my bouquet. My other aunt gave me a charm bracelet that she likes to wear when she goes out to remind me to keep fun times in my marriage (and it was not associated with her wedding at all).

Different situation because the weddings in question were/are long and happy, but I wore a dress made from the skirt from my mother's wedding gown and a new bodice I made for it. Before I wore it, one of my sisters wore the dress (in it's original condition). My daughter tried my version on when she got engaged, but it's 4" too short (and some of the now 70-year old fabric of the skirt is literally disintegrating before our eyes). We are going to cut fabric from the dress and use it to wrap daughter's bouquet stems. She'll be carrying her grandmother/aunt/mom's dress down the aisle with her. For us, it's very meaningful. Again, in our case, the dress has very happy memories associated with it, but the fabric of your mom's dress is still a close connection to her. I've also heard of brides making their veil from the skirt fabric of a family dress.