A Short History of the White Gown

It is almost impossible to think of a wedding ceremony without conjuring up images of young women in fluffy, white gowns complimented with veils. There is no getting around the importance that the dress now plays in the wedding ceremony. Many think that a bride really isn’t a bride unless she is wearing a white dress and a veil.

The popularity of wearing white is not a 19th Century innovation, as is usually thought. Instead it is a rehashing of past ideals. Although the actual style of the dress has undergone many different transformations conforming with the times and fashions, the wedding costume for the most part remains long and white. The nuptial white was first made popular by Anne of Brittany in 1499, but before that a pale blue that was associated with the Virgin Mary was at times popular. In the ancient Middle East, blue was considered the color for purity.

The Elizabethan bride certainly strove to have a white gown that would be made from any home made cloth for two purposes. The first to exhibit the wealth of her family and her groom and the second to pronounce her chastity as a bride. But the women who were likely to be able to attain a white wedding gown were those who had the monetary means to do so. Lower class brides often wore a variety of bright colors, and her bridesmaids wore the colors of the bride.

However, the popularization of a white wedding gown did grow in the 19th Century with the marriage of Princess Victoria, eldest daughter of Queen Victoria of Great Britain to Prince Frederick William of Prussia, eldest son of the emperor of Germany in 1858. Princess Victoria wore a white wedding dress and afterward, all of England was busy trying to catch up to her trend-setting ways. The wedding was the model for which all weddings were trying to live up to.

Interestingly enough, the model set by this wedding doesn’t just apply to the brides' attire but to that of the groom as well. Prince Frederick wore the a practical dinner jacket designed by Edward the Prince of Wales to the 1858 wedding. Before this fashionable outfit was popularized by the prince, grooms had little constriction on what they should wear to their wedding day. But this was the wedding that raised the bar for all the grooms that came after Prince Frederick.

And of course, traditionally, no bride is complete without a veil. This age old custom reaches back to Pope Nicholas I and his thoughts on marriage in the Church. The Pope wrote: “First of all they [the bride and groom] are placed in the church with oblations, which they have to make to God by the hands of the priests and so at last they receive the benediction and heavenly veil.” This sacred reference to the “heavenly veil” was connected in the practice of the ninth century brides wearing veils in the betrothal ceremony until her marriage and then after she was newly wed. However the as the betrothal ceremony became less about financial obligations and more about ‘courtly love’ the veil became something that was only worn during the nuptial ceremony.