White Wedding Dresses How It Became The Standard Color
If you are looking at wedding gowns, are you looking at the typical color of white to wear? Most wedding gowns of today are white but were wedding dresses always white? Did brides believe that wearing any other color to the wedding brought bad luck to the relationship and marriage?
If looking at centuries past, women wore what would make them look brilliant and alluring on their wedding day. For high societal members who coudl afford it, most brides chose colors of purple, red and black.
The rich elite would wear furs and gems on their dresses so that everyone knew the bride when she made her presence known. Brides of rich families wore velvet and silk. Brides of a lower class would use linen or fine wool for their dress material. Certain colors were considered lucky and unlucky for a wedding dress. For instance, the shades of:
- Pink was unlucky for 11 months of the year except for the month of May
- Green was unlucky because it’s the color that invites fairies and/or rain.
- Blue was lucky because it represented the bride’s fidelity, purity and everlasting love. The color blue was often chosen because many people believed it made a man (groom) faithful to their wives through the entire marriage.
- White was unlucky and lucky depending on where in the world you were. Some countries believed it represented innocence. In other parts, it was concerned the color of bereavement.
- Yellow was seen as lucky because it was such as fashionable color.
- Red was unlucky because the color was used to represent scarlet women.
- Grey was neutral; women used the color on the bridal dress so they could use the dress any other time they saw fit.
- Black was unlucky because it was seen as the color of bereavement just like white was in some cultures.
When looking back through the decades, dresses came in a variety of colors excluding the colors of red and black.
When did white become fashionable for a wedding especially since it was considered taboo and only used for mourning? It would be during the 1800s when Princess Charlotte wore herself a white wedding gown when she married Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg.
Not very much longer after the princess/prince’s union, Queen Victoria chose herself a white silk wedding gown to wear. However, the color was chosen to add extras to the dress including lace she already owned. Her bridesmaids carried the train of her wedding gown. Would she use this wedding gown again? She did. During the Diamond Jubilee celebration she wore the gown over a black silk gown. Thus began the trend for women of today to use the color white on their wedding day.
When you begin looking at today’s wedding dresses, they come in a variety of colors including eggshell, ecru, ivory and the standard white. Wedding gown designs have changed with the times. Most women who wear a white wedding gown see it as a sign that white means purity.
