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If there’s one universal symbol of a wedding it’s a white dress. Ask anyone off the street the meaning behind that dress and they’d say it symbolizes purity, even virginity. We keep adhering to the supposed tradition of a white wedding dress and the meaning behind it, even if that latter part isn’t usually relevant anymore.
Almost every woman wears a white dress to her wedding. The most common reason for deviation is if it’s a second (or third or fourth, etc.) marriage, when it’s not as scandalous to acknowledge that the implied “purity” of the white gown isn’t exactly relevant. Some bold women don’t wear white from the start, and honestly I applaud them for not bowing to the kind of sexist assumption that a woman must come pure to her wedding (when I don’t see anything as obviously equivalent for men).
Here’s the kicker: the white wedding dress doesn’t mean purity. That’s not why women started wearing the color. In fact, before 1840 women didn’t necessarily wear white at all to their weddings. It’s rare that we can pinpoint a tradition to an exact date, but in this case we can: February 10, 1840.
That’s the date Queen Victoria married Prince Albert. Victoria wore a white dress for her wedding, and it became an overnight fashion craze. Well, perhaps not instant, but soon after her wedding more and more white dresses began appearing in shops and girls donned them for their weddings.
Fashion and costuming site The Dreamstress has a bunch of fascinating details on the tradition. Prior to Victoria’s wedding the color of a wedding dress depended in part on your social status. If you were from the lower classes you’d just wear your fanciest dress. It could come in any color; the hue didn’t matter, what mattered was the quality. Dresses were usually passed down in the family, because they couldn’t afford to buy such finery each time a girl got married.
This isn’t to say that no woman wore white to her wedding before Queen Victoria. That’s decidedly not true. In fact, white was a common choice for a dress in the higher classes. The difference is that it certainly wasn’t the default color the way it is today; in fact sometimes the nobility wore their family colors to a wedding, bride included. There is also no historical record proving that traditionally white in a wedding dress was associated with the bride’s purity/virginity.
Victoria, however, broke with tradition in wearing a white wedding dress. While it was a common choice for the higher classes, the English royalty usually married in metallic gowns of silver and gold. It’s easy enough to guess why.
Victoria wanted to indicate that she was more than just a princess about to become a consort queen; she was the Queen, the primary ruler, and that wouldn’t change after her wedding. She chose a dress swathed in handmade lace in order to support and stimulate the industry, one that had been struggling after the introduction of machines during the Industrial Revolution. After that, white was simply the best color to highlight the lace.
I absolutely love that Victoria made a political statement with her gown, instead of one about her sexual status that’s steeped in an unfair patriarchy. Of course, I wore a white dress to my wedding. It’s a brave bride today who’d do otherwise, simply because of what everyone thinks about it. I just wanted to get through my wedding as quickly and painlessly as possible, so it was the easiest choice.
It’s just boggling to think that a tradition so ingrained into our consciousness actually isn’t all that old, and that we follow it on an erroneous assumption. Many of our other wedding traditions also have surprising origins, and I’ll look into those more in the future.
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*(This photo from the Wikimedia Commons is of the portrait of Victoria in her wedding dress painted by Winterhalter in 1842. It is in the public domain for free use).