{Dressed In White, Or Not}

Dear Bride-to-Be:
There are so many choices of wedding gowns today now that a plethora of designers are in the business. Once white became the traditional color (beginning almost two hundred years ago with British royalty, but really only becoming “the” color in the middle of last century—the post-war ’50s really loved “the great white wedding”), white gowns became steeped in emotions and dreams and lots of “meaning.”

Wearing white may have become the “tradition,” but there have always been “fashion rebels” (some who wore purple or red gowns; or hot pants and see-through tops) and members of royalty (who at one time wore brocades of silver) and societal “rules” that encouraged some brides—usually to please their mothers—to avoid wearing a shade of “off-white” (if one was hung-up on “virginal” implications!)
 

Now in our Internet-equalizer world there is a near universal popularity of the gown that turns a bride into a “vision in white” and evokes some kind of “princess” tingling down to her toes. Has the color white finally lost any cultural and emotional symbolism and is now just a “pretty preference”?

 

I find that wearing white has always had a ceremonial and regal quality...taking on a kind of goddess-like radiance. (No wonder women love wearing white a bride.) So whatever you wear for your wedding, add your own “meaning” and just be sure that it includes some “I feel gorgeous” tingling down to your toes!

Love. Listen. Let go.
...with love from Cornelia

[Photograph: Bryan Gardner for Martha Stewart]