Everyone knows not to wear white to a wedding so as not to upstage the bride, but what happens if a bride decides to wear pink, yellow or even blue? The answer: added stress for some brides and sartorial confusion for wedding guests.
Image source: nytimes.com
Chrysten Cloud-Forrest, 31, chose a beige dress in a shade called “cement” for her November 2012 wedding to Matthew Forrest, 34, in Rincón, P.R. She worried about matching her wedding guests, and although she stopped short of issuing a dress code, the bride, an acupuncturist based in Santa Monica, Calif., asked her maid of honor to spread the word to “not wear khaki.”
But one guest didn’t follow the rules, and on her wedding day Mrs. Cloud-Forrest found herself next to a woman in a dress almost the exact shade as her gown.
“It was very embarrassing,” said Mrs. Cloud-Forrest, who also had a battle with her mother over her choice of color. Though her wedding guests had a positive reaction to her nontraditional gown, she said, “who is going to tell a bride they don’t like their dress on their wedding day?”
More brides like Mrs. Cloud-Forrest are choosing to not wear white, a choice that has long been embraced in Hollywood — particularly for second, third (or more) marriages. The actresses Kaley Cuoco and Jessica Biel, who had never married before, both wore pink dresses to their weddings. The singers Avril Lavigne and Tina Turner wore black and green, respectively, for their second marriages. Elizabeth Taylor famously wore a yellow dress to marry Richard Burton in 1964, after donning green to wed Eddie Fisher in 1959. (She did wear white for her first marriage, to Conrad Hilton, in 1950.)
According to the Old Farmer’s Almanac, which is for some a long-range planning guide for wedding weather, brides historically wore their best clothes, irrespective of the color, to their wedding. It wasn’t until Queen Victoria chose white for her 1840 wedding to Prince Albert that a white gown became the norm.
Although white wedding gowns once symbolized purity and innocence, that isn’t necessarily the case anymore. “That whole idea that only virginal or first-time brides can wear white went out in the ’60s,” said Lizzie Post, an etiquette author and a spokeswoman for the Emily Post Institute. “Some brides want to look bridal on their wedding day, while others just want to look like themselves,” she said.
David’s Bridal, one of the nation’s largest wedding gown retailers, introduced colored wedding dresses in 2010. Michele von Plato, the senior vice president for design at David’s Bridal, said that sales of colored gowns have doubled every year since then, and that the sector accounts for 4 to 5 percent of all its bridal gown sales.
Brides of all ages and marital statuses are embracing color, Ms. von Plato said. “It comes down to brides wanting to be unique and stand out on their wedding day, and wanting to wear a dress that reflects who they are,” she said.
Terry Hall, the fashion director at Kleinfeld Bridal in New York, said that young first-time brides are driving the trend: “Colored wedding dresses speak to some brides’ personalities. They want to have their Hollywood red-carpet moment.”
In December, David’s Bridal introduced the White by Vera Wang Ebony Collection, featuring all-black gowns. Vera Wang’s own fall 2014 bridal collection includes pinks (petal, rose, coral and peony, according to a spokeswoman), while its spring 2013 line featured shades of red. The current issue of Brides magazine has a spread of colored dresses from Angel Sanchez and Monique Lhuillier.
When a bride chooses a nonwhite dress, it can set the tone for the entire wedding, said Kellee Khalil, the founder of Lover.ly, a wedding website. “The first thing a bride tends to do is book the venue and then pick a dress, and it all trickles down from there,” she said.
If a bride goes for a nontraditional dress, she will often have other nontraditional elements, Ms. Khalil said. “You might see a wedding party where the bride has guys on her side, or there’s a piñata instead of a bouquet toss as a way to get everyone on the dance floor,” she said.
Mrs. Cloud-Forrest in her beige dress, for example, did a dance-off with her mother, and her ceremony was led by a Tibetan Buddhist psychotherapist, she said.
Stella Hernandez, 30, had many quirky touches at her November 2013 wedding to Diego Pinzon, 32, at the Vizcaya Museum and Gardens in Miami. Ms. Hernandez works as a wedding photographer and said she didn’t want to look like every other first-time bride.
“I feel like weddings are so cookie cutter now,” she said.
She chose a rose-gold gown from Bhldn and paired it with a vintage-style birdcage veil, made her own centerpieces out of paper flowers, and built a boutonniere out of bicycle cogs for Mr. Pinzon, who owns a bicycle shop. Mr. Pinzon wore a seersucker jacket and a polka-dot bow tie instead of a traditional tuxedo.
Choosing not to wear white can create complications and raise etiquette questions: Should a bride inform her fiancé, and wedding guests, about her choice of color? Can she create a dress code for her guests? And can the bridesmaids wear white, as Pippa Middleton did?
Keija Minor, the editor in chief of Brides magazine, advised against dressing bridesmaids in white. “I would suggest choosing a complementary color for the bridesmaids, but don’t put them in a color that is brighter than the bride’s gown,” said Ms. Minor, who added that a champagne hue is a safe choice.
Kpoene’ Kofi-Nicklin, the owner of Mignonette Bridal, a bridal salon in Chicago, said that 20 percent of its gown sales in 2013 were a color other than white, with the majority being “pinky blush,” followed by silvery gray, green and blue from designers like Ms. Wang and Elie Saab.
“Just about every girl who didn’t pick a white gown put her bridesmaids in gray,” Mrs. Kofi-Nicklin said. “It just makes the wedding gown pop.”
But if a bride wants to ensure she’s the only one wearing a particular color on the big day, how does she get the word out to her guests? Ms. Post said: “If a bride chooses to wear pink, she can’t dictate what her guests can wear, but she can request it. But what are you going to do, include a swatch of fabric with your wedding invitation? If you’re taking a risk by not wearing a white wedding dress, you have to accept that some people may be wearing the same color as you.”
Ms. Post said that brides can enlist their mother or bridesmaids to spread the word to avoid certain colors, but brides must understand “it’s only a request.”
Yifat Oren, a Los Angeles-based wedding planner who counts the actresses Anne Hathaway and Reese Witherspoon among her clients, said it would be very unusual for a bride to let her guests know the color of her wedding gown ahead of time. (For her second marriage, Ms. Witherspoon wore a blush Monique Lhuillier gown. Ms. Hathaway, who had never been married before, chose a Valentino dress that was hand-painted pink.)
“The color of a wedding dress becomes the talking point,” Ms. Oren said. “The brides who don’t wear white are certainly the women with a strong sense of fashion, and they’re a little daring.” Ms. Oren herself wore a peach-colored gown at her 2006 nuptials, she said.
Ms. Khalil agreed that most brides wouldn’t share details about the dress: “It’s like the big reveal. Why would you give that away?”
But when a bride tells her guests she won’t be wearing white, it can leave people confused about their own dress code.
There is a website to help. Couples can register their upcoming weddings at dressyourguests.com and invite family and friends to post pictures of their outfits to get visual guidance and inspiration.
“It’s a way to avoid the uncomfortable feeling of walking into an event wearing the wrong thing or making the faux pas of showing up in the same dress as someone else,” said Kate Brennan, a New York City stylist and a co-founder of the site. “We’ve all been there.”
Another site, what2wearwhere.com, showcases typical outfits for a variety of weddings, from winter to island themed, and offers shopping advice. Some couples even use Facebook to form private groups for their guests to help them decide what is appropriate to wear.
Such sites might have come in handy for those who attended the wedding of Kait Drace and Ben Van Houten in January.
Ms. Drace, 33, and Mr. Van Houten, 32, married at her parents’ house near San Francisco. She chose a nude, dusty rose dress with flowers on the hem that she bought from ModCloth.com. There were several reasons she didn’t wear white. She had given birth two months earlier and didn’t want to spend a lot of money on a dress that might not have been a perfect fit, and Ms. Drace, a middle-school teacher, said she was never one who dreamed about her wedding dress.
“It just didn’t seem appropriate to stand in my parents’ living room in a big white dress,” she said. “I wanted my dress to represent who I am, and I’m a pony-tail-and-sweatshirt kind of girl.”
But her relaxed attitude led to some confusion about dress codes. She said her parents dressed up for the wedding, but her in-laws did not (her mother-in-law wore a fleecy sweatshirt). “I think the combination of having the wedding at my parents’ house and me not wearing white just confused them,” she said.
For some brides who choose not to wear white, it’s not about being daring or making a fashion statement; they just want to look good. When Missy Carpenter, 31, an education advocate based in Chicago, married Paul Glanville, 32, a mechanical engineer, the 6-foot-tall bride chose a royal blue gown for the August 2013 event. She thought that wearing white would make her look pale. Ms. Carpenter said she didn’t tell her guests she was wearing blue, and wasn’t concerned that a guest might wear the same shade of blue.
“Everyone at my wedding knew who the bride was,” she said, “even if I wasn’t wearing white.”
Brides-to-be who would like to have a great selection of traditional and contemporary gowns to choose from should check out The Bridal Collection Inc.’s showroom at Thousand Oaks, Calif. For a preview of the bridal store’s wide selection, click here.
