Lady Forrest from Australia, 1876. Victorian style dress.

A wedding dress or wedding gown is the clothing worn by a bride during a wedding ceremony. Color, style and ceremonial importance of the gown can depend on the religion and culture of the wedding participants. In Western culture brides often choose a dress of white to symbolize purity of the soul, and the dress may form part of a bride's trousseau. In eastern cultures, brides often choose red to symbolize auspiciousness.

Western culture[link]

Weddings performed during and immediately following the Middle Ages were often more than just a union between two people. They could be a union between two families, two businesses or even two countries. Many weddings were more a matter of politics than love, particularly among the nobility and the higher social classes. Brides were therefore expected to dress in a manner that cast their families in the most favorable light, for they were not representing only themselves during the ceremony. Brides from wealthy families often wore rich colors and exclusive fabrics. It was common to see them wearing bold colors and layers of furs, velvet and silk.

Over the centuries, brides continued to dress in a manner befitting their social status—always in the height of fashion, with the richest, boldest materials money could buy. The poorest of brides wore their best church dress on their wedding day. The amount of material a wedding dress contained also was a reflection of the bride's social standing and indicated the extent of the family's wealth to wedding guests. Today, there are wedding dresses available in all price ranges, and Western traditions have loosened up to include a rainbow of colors and variety of lengths, which are now considered acceptable. Women may purchase ready-made gowns, wear a family heirloom, or they may choose to have a dressmaker create one for her. In addition, today many bridal salons have samples of wedding gowns in their stores where the bride selects a certain style and orders one to be made to fit.

Wedding dresses have traditionally been based on the popular styles of the day. For example, in the 1920s, wedding dresses were typically short in the front with a longer train in the back and were worn with cloche-style wedding veils. This tendency to follow current fashions continued until the late 1940s, when it became popular to revert to long, full-skirted designs reminiscent of the Victorian era. Although there has always been a style that dominates the bridal market for a time, and then shifts with the changes in fashion, a growing number of modern brides are not choosing to follow these trends. This is due in large part to non-traditional and non-first-time weddings, and women who are marrying later in life.

Today, Western wedding dresses are usually white^[1] though "wedding white" includes shades such as eggshell, ecru and ivory. Lowering wedding costs by selecting a second hand wedding dress rather than purchasing a new one is a growing trend.^[2]

Mary, Queen of Scots, wore a white wedding gown in 1559 when she married her first husband, Francis Dauphin of France because it was her favorite color, although white was then the color of mourning for French Queens. The first documented instance of a princess who wore a white wedding gown for a royal wedding ceremony is that of Philippa of England, who wore a tunic with a cloak in white silk bordered with grey squirrel and ermine) in 1406.^[3]

White did not become a popular option until 1840, after the marriage of Queen Victoria to Albert of Saxe-Coburg. Victoria wore a white gown for the event to incorporate some lace she prized. The official wedding portrait photograph was widely published, and many other brides opted for white in accordance with the Queen's choice.^[4]

The tradition continues today in the form of a white wedding, though prior to the Victorian era, a bride was married in any color, black being especially popular in Scandinavia.^[5] Later, many people assumed that the color white was intended to symbolize virginity, though this was not the original intention. (It was the color blue that was connected to purity.) The white gown is in fact a symbolic Christening gown. They are a variation of the white surplice worn in the Western Catholic tradition by members of the clergy, church choirs and servers and the gowns worn by girls making their first communion and at their confirmation and also by women making religious vows. Jews have gone to great lengths ^[6] to follow^[7] these Western (Judeo-Christian) customs, whilst adhering to the laws of Tzniut. Today, the white dress is understood merely as the most traditional and popular choice for weddings.

Current fashion[link]

About 75% of wedding dresses on the market are strapless, sleeveless gowns, in part because such dresses require less skill from the designers and are easier to alter to fit correctly.^[8]

Vietnamese wedding Ao dai

Eastern culture[link]

Many wedding dresses in China, India (wedding sari) and Vietnam (in the traditional form of the Ao dai) are colored red, the traditional color of good luck and auspiciousness. Nowadays, many women choose other colors besides red. In modern mainland Chinese weddings, the bride may opt for Western dresses of any color, and later don a traditional costume for the official tea ceremony.

Qing dynasty styled traditional Chinese wedding dress with phoenix crown (鳳冠) headpiece still used in modern Taiwanese weddings.

In modern Taiwanese weddings, the bride generally picks red (following Chinese tradition) or white (more Western) silk for the wedding gown material, but most will wear the red traditional garmet for their formal wedding banquets. Traditionally, the father of the bride is responsible for the wedding banquet hosted on the bride's side and the alcohol (specifically called "xi-jiu," confusingly the same as what the wedding banquet itself is called) consumed during both banquets. While the wedding itself is often based on the couple's choices, the wedding banquets are a symbolic gesture of "thanks" and appreciation, to those that have raised the bride and groom (such as grandparents and uncles) and those who will continue to be there to help the bride and groom in the future. Thus out of respect for the elders, wedding banquets are usually done formally and traditionally.

Red wedding saris are the traditional garment choice for brides in Indian culture. Sari fabric is also traditionally silk. Over time, color options and fabric choices for Indian brides have expanded. Today fabrics like crepe, Georgette, charmeuse, and satin are used, and colors have been expanded to include gold, pink, orange, maroon, brown, and yellow as well.^[9] Indian brides in Western countries often wear the sari at the wedding ceremony and change into traditional Indian wear afterwards (lehnga, choli, etc.).

Japanese formal wedding dress still used today.

At Japanese weddings, brides will often wear three or more dresses throughout the ceremony and subsequent celebrations with a traditional kimono, white and colour dress combination being popular. White is used, because in Japan it symbolizes death—in this case, the bride becomes dead to her family. The bride will eventually remove her white kimono to reveal another colored one—usually red—to symbolize her rebirth into her husband's family.

The Javanese people of Indonesia wear a kebaya, a traditional kind of blouse, along with batik.

In the Philippines, variations of the Baro't saya are considered to be wedding attire for women, along with the Barong Tagalog for men.

Native American culture[link]

Apache bride

The indigenous peoples of the Americas have varying traditions related to weddings and thus wedding dresses. A Hopi bride traditionally would have her garments woven by the groom and any men in the village who wished to participate. The garments consisted of a large belt, two all-white wedding robes, a white wedding robe with red stripes at top and bottom, white buckskin leggings and moccasins, a string for tying the hair, and a reed mat in which to wrap the outfit. This outfit also would serve as a shroud, since these garments would be necessary for the trip through the underworld.

A Pueblo bride wore a cotton garment tied above the right shoulder, secured with a belt around the waist.

In the traditions of the Delaware, a bride would wear a knee-length skirt of deerskin and a band of wampum beads around her forehead. Except for fine beads or shell necklaces, the body would be bare from the waist up. If it were a winter wedding, she would wear deerskin leggings and moccasins and a robe of turkey feathers. Her face would be painted with white, red and yellow clay.

The tribes of Northern California (which include the Klamath, the Modoc and the Yurok) had a traditional bridal dress woven in symbolic colors: white for the east, blue for the south, yellow (orange) for the west; and black for the north. Turquoise and silver jewelry were worn by both the bride and the groom in addition to a silver concho belt. Jewelry was considered a shield against evils including hunger, poverty and bad luck.

Gallery[link]

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  Wishram Bride

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  Traditional Finnish farmer wedding dress in Jomala

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  Wedding dress in 1350s from "The Marriage" by Nicolo da Bologna

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  Traditional Kazakh wedding dress

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  Opulent wedding dress of Soraya Esfandiary, created by Christian Dior

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  Patricia Nixon Cox with her father Richard Nixon, 1971

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  American bride wearing a Contemporary Western Wedding Dress

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  A bride in 1968, wearing a dress reflecting the styles of the time

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  Rajput bride wearing a pink lehenga

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  West Bengali bride

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  Malayali Christian bride in white Sari

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  Wedding dresses and other Asian couture in London

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  Qing dynasty-style traditional southeastern Chinese wedding dress (still used in modern day weddings.)

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  Taiwanese couple dressed Western-style for keepsake photos in the park, 1989

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  Bride at a Nikah ceremony wearing typical South Asian red head covering and jewellery

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  Chinese couple wearing traditional wedding hanfu

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  Japanese woman in a wedding kimono

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  Hutsul wedding dress

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  A Swedish bridal crown of the most formal type and four brides who wore it (1938-1978)

Notes[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Wedding dress

External links[link]

• Wedding Dresses at Chicago History Museum Digital Collections
• Wedding dress, 1900, in the Staten Island Historical Society Online Collections Database
• Wedding dress, 1951, in the Staten Island Historical Society Online Collections Database