My aunt Gertrud Martina and My Uncle Erwin Joseph at their wedding in the 1930's
Does the tradition of the white wedding dress come from the colour’s ancient symbolic association with virginity and purity? This is a myth, in reality, the white wedding dress is a much more recent development. It was Queen Victoria who made it popular and a tradition for brides to wear a white wedding dress. Royalty typically wore embroidered brocade and crimson robes for weddings. Victoria wore a white satin gown with layers of lace made by two hundred women and a white veil. The lavish dress and the wedding between Victoria and her cousin Albert in 1840 were written up and illustrated in thousands of publications worldwide. Soon, American etiquette books decreed that the white wedding was the "proper style." The white wedding dress became a symbol of wealth and social status—after all, white could not easily be cleaned or worn again outside of hot summer months, and very few women could afford to buy and wear a dress solely for one occasion.
Generally bridal attire was simply dictated by what a woman had in her closet and by what was au courant. So, while brides in the Western world have worn white, they’ve also donned every other colour of the rainbow and black!
By the late 1800s, American and European brides loved wedding dresses in the bright, rich colours created by new synthetic dyes.
During WWI, many women considered it their duty to give up a "white wedding" in wartime, and during the Depression most brides had no choice, simply making do with their best dress or suit.
Garment manufacturers began specializing in making wedding dresses, and bridal magazines filled with photographs began marketing the white wedding dress as part of a romantic ideal, a custom from "the earliest ages." Marketing, rather than any ageless tradition, that has made the white wedding dress a ubiquitous part of our visual culture. (excerpts Smithsonian history)
Photo/Text Ts Titania-Everyday..
