Baptisms are especially tied to white since the person is making a religious commitment to be pure and clean before God. In Christianity, children are baptized and first take communion wearing white. Christ after the Resurrection is traditionally portrayed dressed in white. The color white is a blank canvas, just waiting to be written on.” White is the color in Western culture most often associated with beginnings. As for other significant meanings for white on a wedding day, “” says, “In color psychology, white is the color of new beginnings - wiping the slate clean. White is also often considered to be the color of perfection. “Color Wheel Pro” describes white in association with light, goodness, innocence, purity and virginity. Other traditions Ī bride in a contemporary white wedding dress with train, tiara and white veil, taken in 2003. The portrayal of weddings in Hollywood movies, particularly immediately after World War II, helped crystallize and homogenize the white wedding into a normative form. Even Queen Victoria had her famous lace wedding dress re-styled for later use. As historian Vicky Howard writes, "f a bride wore white in the nineteenth century, it was acceptable and likely that she wore her gown again". With increased prosperity in the 20th century, the tradition also grew to include the practice of wearing the dress only once. However, middle-class British and American brides did not adopt the trend fully until after World War II. Įtiquette books then began to turn the practice into a tradition and the white gown soon became a popular symbol of status that also carried "a connotation of innocence and virginal purity." The story put out about the wedding veil was that decorous brides were naturally too timid to show their faces in public until they were married.īy the end of the 19th century the white dress was the garment of choice for elite brides on both sides of the Atlantic. Īlthough women were required to wear veils in many churches through at least the 19th century, the resurgence of the wedding veil as a symbol of the bride, and its use even when not required by the bride's religion, coincided with societal emphasis on women being modest and well-behaved. They were favored primarily as a way to show the world that the bride's family was so wealthy and so firmly part of the leisure class that the bride would choose an elaborate dress that could be ruined by any sort of work or spill. As accounts of Victoria's wedding spread across the Atlantic and throughout Europe, elites followed her lead.īecause of the limitations of laundering techniques before the later part of the 20th century, white dresses provided an opportunity for conspicuous consumption. During this time, European and American brides wore a plethora of colours, including blue, yellow, and practical colours like black, brown, or gray. Royal brides before Victoria did not typically wear white, instead choosing "heavy brocaded gowns embroidered with white and silver thread," with red being a particularly popular colour in Western Europe more generally. Queen Victoria and Prince Albert on their return from the marriage service at St James's Palace, London, 10 February 1840. This wedding is generally considered the most influential white wedding of the 20th century.
The white wedding style was given another significant boost in 1981, when three-quarter billion people-one out of six people around the globe-watched Charles, Prince of Wales marry Diana Spencer in her elaborate white taffeta dress with a 25-foot-long train. The term now also encapsulates the entire Western wedding routine, especially in the Christian religious tradition, which generally includes a church service during which the marriage begins, followed by a reception. The term originates from the white colour of the wedding dress, which first became popular with Victorian era elites after Queen Victoria wore a white lace dress at her wedding. For the 2009 film, see White Wedding (film).Ī white wedding is a traditional formal or semi-formal wedding originating in Great Britain. For the Billy Idol song, see White Wedding (song). This article is about the set of wedding traditions.