Wedding Dresses

Wedding Dresses

Wedding Dresses

Wedding Dresses

Wedding Dresses

Wedding Dresses

Wedding Dresses

Re-trimming the dress made it appropriate for many different functions. By the nineteenth century, a bride wearing her white dress after the wedding was accepted. By 1800, machine made fabrics and inexpensive muslins made the white dress with a veil the prevailing fashion. The "traditional" wedding dress as known today didn't appear until the 1800's.

For those who had to wear a dress that would be used for regular occasions after the wedding, many brides would decorate the dress for the special day with temporary decorations. In the 1800's, gray became a color for wedding gowns for brides of lower classes because the dress became re-used as the bride's Sunday best. Fashions changed from gowns of color to ones of white, or a variation of white, but since it wasn't a practical shade for most purposes, blue became another favorite, as did pink. Factory-made materials, with their lower costs, caused the lost of the original meaning of the train of a wedding gown, but it became a tradition over time. The dress with flowing sleeves or a train was a status symbol, for the poor had to use material as sparingly as possible.

The bride would actually glitter in the sunshine. Centuries ago, only the rich could afford materials of red, purple, and true black; therefore, the wealthy brides would wear dresses of color adorned with jewels. Over the centuries wedding dresses have changed, but a bride has always wanted her dress to be special, to make her look more beautiful.