When Phyllis Feiser agreed only a week ago to play a role in the Historic Natchez Pageant, she knew where to go first — to Sandra Stokes.

Stokes, who has made costumes for Pilgrimage participants for 30 years, bustled around her shop, San-Jay’s, Tuesday, working with seamstresses, pinning up hems and getting the final details finished on costumes that will be worn during the Natchez Spring Pilgrimage.

Pilgrimage season begins with the pageant Friday and house tours on Saturday. The season continues into April — the pageant through April 7 and the house tours through April 14.

Feiser stood for a final fitting on the dress she will wear as “mother of the bride” in the tableau that portrays the marriage of Jefferson Davis and Varina Howell at the Natchez house The Briars.

“I love the pageant,” said Feiser, who took part in dress rehearsals last week and is ready for her debut Friday.

The pageant, which has been a part of Spring Pilgrimage since beginning in 1932, is 8 p.m. every Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday at Natchez City Auditorium.

Depicting scenes from life in Natchez prior to the Civil War, the pageant includes acting, singing, dancing and music, with all participants decked out in proper period costumes — as Feiser will be.

With her husband, Clark, Feiser moved to Natchez in 2005 from Pennsylvania. Both husband and wife became active in the community.

On fitting day for his wife, Clark had chores of his own, helping to get some maintenance problems solved at antebellum Auburn, one of the houses on the tours.

Stokes has a role that goes beyond dressmaker. “I asked her to show me how to navigate steps (in the hoopskirt),” Feiser said. “I still worry about tripping, but I guess that’s natural.”

Stokes knows her way around a hoopskirt, all right. She knows her way around the dressing rooms and backstage at the auditorium, too.

She is at the pageant every night, ready for whatever emergency arises along with a costume committee comprised of several members of the Natchez Garden Club and the Pilgrimage Garden Club, pageant sponsors.

“I sewed up one girl on stage in her court dress,” Stokes said, referring to the final tableau, which features a king, queen and royal court. “She bent over to tie her shoe and the zipper broke.”

At the auditorium, Stokes has a roll of masking tape on her wrist and a box of pins in her pocket at all times, she said.

Her shop also has been the scene of small emergencies, Stokes said.

“One little boy came in and ran immediately to the corner of the room and said, ‘I’m not putting that on,’” she said. “The mother and grandmother told me just to finish the costume without trying it on him.”

The child, then about 3, and outfitted for the pageant known as the “little maypole,” was no more cooperative when his mother took him to the auditorium to take part.

“They took him. But he would not let them put on the costume. He kept saying, ‘I’m not wearing that,’” Stokes said. “But he wound up later being king (of the royal court in the pageant).”

Stokes said last-minute emergencies never fail to occur. Her challenge is getting all the little details completed so that the show can go on when the curtains part.

“There are always things to do right at the end, but we try to have everything ready by opening weekend,” she said.

And she pointed to her busy seamstresses. “I couldn’t do it without them.”

For Feiser, there are three outfits — one for the pageant and two for her duties as serving as a hostess at the houses Auburn, Magnolia Hall and The House on Ellicott Hill.

Feiser and her husband fell in love with Natchez when they visited the city as part of a Delta Queen cruise 15 years ago. They never forgot it.

Instead of a city in Florida, they chose Natchez as a place to retire. “I love Natchez,” she said. “I find everybody so nice and friendly.”

The pageant already has provided little pleasures. As a mother of three sons, she said, “I’m so excited to be the mother of a bride. And I had fun introducing my pageant husband to my real husband.”