Wedding dresses through the ages
On my mother’s wall hangs a picture of her mother and father on their wedding day. My mother is 88 now, so I would assume this picture is at least a hundred years old. My grandmother stands so regal, no smiles. Her husband is at her side dressed in a white shirt and black suit holding a boulder hat in his hand, she holds a small bouquet in her hand and a flower in her hair that is pulled back into a bun, but no veil, she wears a dress that has a shawl that surrounds her shoulders and buttons that go down to the waist line. The arms are covered to the wrist and the neckline rides high on her neck. The bottom of the shawl is edged in a darker color as is the bottom of the dress about 6 inches above the hem. There is no lace or frills. Her black boots peek out from under the dress. The picture, of course, is in black and white so there is no way of knowing the color but it is easy to tell it is not white.
This picture always enthralled me. I have asked my mother what happened to her dress and she told me that back then the dress you wore when you married may have been new or your existing best dress but when the wedding was over the dress was worn as a Sunday dress until it got to frayed then it was used as an everyday dress until it was worn out. I think of that dress now and know how far we have come when it comes to wedding dresses. My grandmother’s dress has no resemblance of what is worn by brides today yet it is totally beautiful in its own way.
Wedding dresses were once worn by status rather than anything else. Dresses were a part of politics, the richer your family was the better your wedding dress was. They were not white but the higher financial status your family had the more colorful and expensive material your dress would be made out of. Things such as fur, velvet and silk would be a part of the dress. The lower class of women would try to model their dresses after the higher status women with what materials they had to work with. Anyone that couldn’t afford a new dress out of any material usually ended up wearing their best church going dress. This may have been what my grandmother did with the dress she wore.
White was not worn until Queen Victoria wore it for her wedding before then wedding dresses were very bright and colorful. It is thought that white signified purity but this didn’t happen until the Christian Churches sanctified the symbol of white as purity. It wasn’t until the 1920′s that there was some thought of a different style put into wedding dresses. At that time they decided that dresses should be higher in front than in the back and a long train was added. The veil also came on the market at the same time. This lasted until the 40′s when the full skirted wedding dress came back into style.
The white wedding dress is the choice of today’s bride although some brides choose other colors. Designers are trying to push red wedding dresses on the market but it is not known yet if that will fly or not. The idea of white meaning purity has died long ago and has really nothing to do with why brides wear white at their weddings today. I still look at my grandmothers picture and let my imagine run wild as to what they were thinking when that picture was taken and what really happened to her wedding dress.
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Tags: Hundred Years, Wedding Day, Wedding Dresses