Wedding Gowns

Wedding Gowns

Next to two other major events in our life, baptism and burial, weddings are known to be the most exciting and life changing event. Bride and groom are celebrating their passage from the status of a single person to the one of a couple. When it comes to the materialistic way of manifestation, this event generally is taken over mostly by the bride, her way of perceiving it proves it through her manner of planning and feeling the thrills of every detail that a wedding has to display. And this is not an aspect that belongs to the present days’ brides, it has a history that stretches way back in the times when marriage was conceived as an act of forming a family with the purpose of procreation.

The apex of the bride’s concern toward her wedding day is represented by the royal names that have tried to lift up to the nobility of their status. In medieval times the marriages bore the print of a political ‘strategy’ in that they used to join in an alliance a bride and a groom from different countries in the purpose of social, political interests. This was the occasion where the bride was supposed to put all her efforts in wearing a wedding outfit that was showing the wealth and the noble status of her royal family. Therefore they did their best in using expensive fabrics, such as velvet, damask, satin, silk to create their wedding gowns in a richness of material and color that only the noble people could afford to use. The jewelries were also an accessory to prove their wealth, most of the brides using gems like sapphires, diamonds, emeralds, to embellish their wedding dresses.

But there were also women not necessary of nobility range who couldn’t afford the richness of fabrics and gems, but had always tried to replicate models of the high social classes, most of the times spending fortunes only to find ways to create wedding dresses resembling to the nobility class. They would often use velvet or silk fabrics adorned with fur trimmings in order to impress her family and friends who were present at their wedding event. For the poor classes, brides were simply following the tradition of a wedding custom, wearing simple and unsophisticated cut for their wedding gowns, generally in a white color, or variations of white, symbolizing virginity and innocence of the girl.

For many of the past brides, especially those belonging to the 19^th century, the wedding dresses were made in such a manner that they would have preserved them over the years in order to wear them again on different occasions. Some of them preferred to have some details of the dress changed either by removing the train or the bodice and replacing it with a most appropriate design to meet the requirements of a day-to-day outfit.

The modern times, due to a constant fluctuation in fashion design, brought a lot of transformation to the wedding gown, and we find short length wedding dresses, sleeveless wedding dresses, non-traditional wedding dresses, and here the range is vast in that they go from the most various types and designs to customized wedding gowns that match the theme of the weddings.