Beautiful blushing brides in white wedding dresses. Handsome grooms in black tuxedos. Bridesmaids in matching attire and family arrangements on one side or the other. Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue. A silver sixpence in her shoe.
There are many wedding traditions that seem rather arbitrary if you do not know the history behind them. The most notable of these is the white wedding, and especially the white wedding dress.
Today, the white wedding is meant to symbolize purity, virginity, and innocence. Brides wear their dress to their wedding of white with a white cake and white flowers. A special occasion where no other guest ought to wear white - it is the color of the celebrated bride.
Yet this was not always the case.
Before the 1840's it was almost unheard of to wear a white dress. Upper class people used weddings to showcase their wealth. They would wear fancy, vibrant dresses with furs and silks. Small gems would be embedded into the gown. It would be handmade, expensive, flashy, and fine.
The people of the lower classes dealt with wedding attire a bit differently. Instead of having a dress made for the wedding, these people of lesser means would take their best dress and wear that for the wedding instead.
Both groups, the wealthy and the poor, would wear that same dress again later for other events as the single use dress ideology didn't come about until the 20th century. This was because of a higher wealth.
The white dress came about in 1840 when Queen Victoria married the noble Prince Albert - her first cousin. It was not that the Queen had any particular fondness for the color white that led to this change, instead it was that she had a lovely piece of lace. She wanted very much to incorporate it into her dress. It was a beautiful white color.
Thus her white dress was created. The white caught on particularly well because of two factors. One factor was the queen's popularity. Because she was royalty, other women wanted to follow her choices. The second factor was wealth. Back in that time if whites were stained, they were ruined forever. Thus, wearing a white dress meant you had enough money that you could wear a dress where if anything was spilled upon it, it would have to be thrown out.
Other families of wealth and power loved this aspect and the white dress became more common. However, it was not until World War II that other more middle class families began adopting it. Even still the white dress was not fully popularized and incorporated into tradition until 1981 when Prince Charles married Diana Spencer. Almost a billion people were watching.
The white dress was incorporated into etiquette books and very quickly the Church brought it in as the symbol for purity and chastity.
The actual color for those virtues? Blue, the color of the Virgin Mary.
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