“Tradition!” My German grandmother picked out the word in her careful, almost-English accent, eyebrows raised. There’s nothing traditional about these huge weddings, she said. When she and her husband married, in December 1942 in London, they walked home from the service with their parents and had lunch; that was their tradition.

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It wasn’t an entirely uncommon one, either. But it feels completely divorced from what we consider today to be traditional: guests by the hundreds, expensive rings, multi-tiered cakes, and of course The Dress. More than anything, it’s those strips of cloth that decide whether a wedding is the epitome of “tradition,” namely white.

Most people think that Western brides wear white as the legacy of a time when the purity of a maiden bride needed to be displayed. With marriages today tending to symbolize firm commitment rather than first intimacy, that seems out of step with the modern world. And still, the popularity of white abides.

When I came to choose a wedding outfit, white was certainly not the only option on the table. I considered green. I toyed with red. My mother had married in a gold suit. And yet, after running the gauntlet of specialist boutiques, vintage shops, tailors and department stores, what I ended up in was—you guessed it—a cascade of gleaming, pure-as-the-driven-snow white.

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Vintage Wedding Dresses

Edwina Ehrman has heard this story many times.

Ehrman, who curates fashion and textiles for the Victoria & Albert museum in London, collected stories as well as frocks when she put together a major exhibition of wedding dresses for the museum last year.

“I have asked people recently why they wore white,” she said. Many, she said, tell her something along the lines of, “’I had no intention of wearing a white dress, but I thought I’d just try one on.’ And when they tried it on they felt—and they all used the same word—they felt transformed. They suddenly felt like a bride.”

In doing so, notes Ehrman, they—or rather, we—perpetuate a tradition that has been shaped more by fiction, and by the media, than by reality.

Yes, some brides throughout history have selected white, but according to Ehrman, it didn’t become a common choice until the 18th century. And when it did, it was as a symbol of status.
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“White was a very, very expensive colour, and most people couldn’t afford to have a white dress in their wardrobe,” she said. “So it was a special colour, a prestigious colour,” and became popular for wedding dresses alongside fabrics woven with metal threads, like gold and silver.

Queen Victoria’s decision to wear white when she married Albert in 1840 was unusual, and it heralded a string of royal princesses following in her footsteps. Only after Victoria made it popular, Ehrman said, did the word “chaste” begin to arise in reference to the white wedding dress.

While white soon became the principle color women aspired to, other colors, like blue, continued to be worn by those for whom a white dress—in an era when all clothes were re-worn, altered, and worn again—was just too impractical.

“If white had been associated with chastity and virginity, which was so prized among the middle and upper classes in the Victorian period, these women would have gone to every length possible to have worn a white dress,” Ehrman said. “They would not have compromised on a blue dress. And yet many, many happily wore a colored dress.”
The 1920s saw more gold, shell pink, and silver at weddings than blancmange, according to Ehrman. And icons of timeless style have often eschewed snowy lace for something altogether more cool.

“There’s this dialogue, constantly, between white and color,” Ehrman said.

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