Royal Wedding

Archive for the ‘wedding dresses’ Category

Undoubtedly, a wedding is one of the most precious and memorable moments in life. To make this occasion more remarkable, certain customs have been practiced, like the special wedding dress, the wedding cake, etc. The bride’s dress is given special importance and care is taken to make her look like an angel in her beautiful wedding gown. The phrase, “dressed up,” is perfectly suited for a wedding, where both the bride and the groom are in their best attire.

The wedding dress is the dress worn by the bride during the wedding ceremony. “Dress maketh a man.” Befittingly, the wedding dress or the bridal gown is usually gorgeous and graceful to reflect the most precious moment in life–marriage. The color, texture, design, etc. of the wedding gown is naturally the bride’s choice. White is a popular color for American wedding dresses, as white is associated with qualities like purity, peace and chastity. Nevertheless, the gown may also be in shades of white like ivory or eggshell.

The background of the wedding governs the nature of the wedding attire. In other words, the society, the culture, and the customs followed by the parties involved in the wedding are key factors in the making of the wedding dress.

In the earlier days, any color other than black or red was acceptable for the wedding gown. A face veil was also worn. The custom of wearing a white dress at a wedding was imitated from the royal weddings, wherein the queen wore a beautiful white wedding gown with a long train behind. This idea was gained from peacocks, which were honored as royal birds.

For the Chinese, the red dress is the most preferred one for weddings. The Chinese consider red to be a lucky color. The Indians also consider red as a color of good omen, so brides in India wear a red sari, which is bright and colorful too. But this color is avoided in Western countries.

Wedding dresses are considered to be one of the centerpiece items in a wedding ceremony. This is because a wedding dress on top of all makes a bride standout among the crowd due to its elegant and breathtaking design. Asides from this, wedding dresses also have a deeper meaning with regards to marriage as these have been symbolizing the bride ever since.

The beauty of wedding dresses resides in how it is able to represent the bride in a unique manner during the wedding ceremony. It also adds up to the stunning factor that occurs when the bride is first seen walking down the isle. This is the reason why a wedding dress is highly prioritized in a wedding arrangement checklist.

Generally speaking, the modern world has been used to the white wedding dress which comes from the Western cultures of European countries. However, there are a lot of other cultures that have different variations of wedding dresses in areas like color, design and pattern. These traditional versions of a wedding dress are also as beautiful as the accustomed white bridal dress and at times more interesting since these are not really seen that often.

In the old Western cultures, marriages during and subsequent the medieval era meant more than just a union between a man and a woman. This was due to the fact that they could also be considered as a union between companies, families, businesses or even countries. A lot of weddings during this time were more of a matter of politics especially for the nobles and higher echelon of the society. This has greatly affected the way wedding dresses were made and worn depending on your social status. Usually, Brides coming from the wealthy families wore bridal gowns of exclusive fabrics and rich colors.

Through the years, brides from wealthy families dressed in a manner that reflected their social status, having the highest form of fashion available combined with the most expensive materials that money could buy. On the other hand, the poorest brides wore the best church clothes that they could find on their wedding day.

Nowadays, there are a lot of choices for wedding gowns since there are different price ranges. There has also been a variety of lengths and colors available since the Western traditions have loosened up. Women can now also have the option to either buy ready made gowns, have a dressmaker create one or wear a family heirloom. Also, the bridal salons today already present samples of the wedding gowns when you visit their store. Because of this you can already select a design that suits your tastes right then and there and just have it customized to fit your size.

For the Asian countries having Eastern culture such as Vietnam, China and India, the traditional bridal dresses are very much affected by the cultural beliefs of the people. The Ao dai which is the traditional bridal dress for Vietnamese women is a perfect example. It is usually in red color which signifies prosperity and good luck for the Vietnamese. The other mentioned countries also share the same line of thinking with regards to the color of their traditional bridal dresses.

However, more women today choose not to follow suit with the customs and traditions of their country or culture since people have a more liberated mindset as compared to before. Instead, they go for customized wedding gowns which will give them a unique appearance as well as represent their own personalities.