Wedding Dress
What a bride wore on her wedding day has only recently become such an ordeal. In the ancient world, there were no wedding dresses. A bride simply wore her best dress, or, if she were wealthy, a very fancy dress. The Puritans wore gray, and only since Queen Victoria has the white wedding dress been popular. Prior to Queen Victoria, brides would wear colors of blues, purples, and yellows. Queen Victoria, who was thought to be rather plain, made quite the fashion statement when she wore her gown of white in her “opulent” wedding. The middle class picked up on this fairytale of the plain girl marrying the handsome prince and the white wedding gown became popular, soon acquiring all sorts of symbolism of purity and chastity. As the fairytale wedding was on the rise, bridal patterns and fabrics became widely available at the turn of the century and families would help the bride make her gown or would do so for her. Throughout the 20th century, fashions in everyday life influenced fashions in the bridal world. In the mid thirties with men back in the work force, more money was available to spend on wedding fashions. Film stars became model brides both on and off the screen. Audrey Hepburn in "Funny Face" modeled a wedding gown typical of the style in the fifties. In the sixties, ready to wear gowns became widely available, cutting out the need of family helping with the wedding gown. The seventies saw the women’s movement and more civil ceremonies. The availability of more locations for the marriage, such as homes, beaches, and gardens, opened new venues of bridal style. But the white wedding did not disappear. The highly publicized weddings of Grace Kelly and Princess Diana furthered the fairytale wedding image of the common girl marrying the handsome prince in the perfect, graceful, opulent ceremony. Today, discount bridal stores sell gowns, veils, and shoes off the rack, ready to wear, with no waiting. They even offer in-store alterations and dye shoes, capitalizing on every aspect of the bride’s attire. Perhaps it is the over-commodification of the wedding and the stress incurred because of it that now draws the family close together and strengthens their bonds.