The history of the bridal gown in Western culture is fairly recent in terms of a more firmly recognizable style. The white wedding dress, accentuated with lace and falling long to the floor, sometimes with a train of cloth extending behind, is familiar to us today as a Western standard but its history does not extend very much farther than a hundred or so years ago.

Historically, Western wedding dresses dyed in different colors were popular because of the value associated with dyed garments and colors such as blue (signifying purity and fidelity) and pink (for its softer, feminine tone) and there was no preference given to one color over another. The wedding dress may have carried distinction in the expense of its fabric, its adornment with jewels or lace, and in the more extravagant cut of its design, rather than in its color.

The Victorian trend for white wedding dresses established more firmly the notion that white was the proper color to be married in. The Victorian era in fashion was given its name from Queen Victoria, who reigned in England from 1837 to 1901, and it is she who had the greater impact on women’s choices in wedding gown style and color. Although white may already have been a familiar choice for the wedding gown, the prominent and public nature of Queen Victoria’s wedding in 1840 allowed that her choice of a white dress be favored and imitated. A photograph of her in her white satin gown adorned with lace was widely available as a reference to the average woman and it is since the Victorian period that white satin has become almost a standard in choice of dress for the Western bride.

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The popularity of Queen Victoria’s white wedding gown was also undoubtedly helped by the timing of its introduction into the history of fashion– it is during the 1800’s that the Industrial Revolution is in full swing and the real possibility of producing imitations of the Queen’s wedding gown in quantity exists. The white wedding gown was both a herald of the implications the Industrial Age was to have on production and an example of the incipient power of marketing in the new 20th century.

image: Painting. ‘The Marriage’, Niccolo da Bologna, c. 1350.
image: Photograph. Queen Victoria in her wedding gown, 1840.

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