Kat Tanaka Okopnik Answers on Wedding Dresses

Wedding Dresses: Should wedding dresses always be white?

Wedding attire varies greatly by culture.

The Western tradition of a white wedding dress actually dates to 1840, and the marriage of Queen Victoria. Until then, English and American wedding dresses were just the most Cocktailjurken 2012 beautiful dress the bride owned, without symbolic color use and the flagging of virginity. Since then, the custom has spread to many other groups. Scandinavian brides evidently used to be attired in black, but now white and silver seem to be common there, too.

I got married in a lime green and lavender sari with bright orange jewelry, with a purple orchid lei. Not what you call traditional by any means. Sorry for the lack of photo on that, I don have any myself.

Hindu weddings traditionally feature brides in deep red accented with gold:

[is this image reversed? I familiar with wearing a sari with the pallu over the left shoulder (although I know there are many Cocktailjurken Lange Cocktailjurken 2013 different ways to drape/tie/wear a sari), and I unclear on whether this transfers to lengha.]

Traditional Japanese wedding kimonos for the bride are characterized more by the tsunokakushi (horn-hider!) headdress and the ornately decorated overcoat (uchikake) rather than the white kimono (shiromuku), which is only one of the possible options for a Japanese bride.

Leaving this in for the record: (I am not clear whether the white wedding kimono tradition is a sort of convergent memetic evolution about purity, or a bleedthrough from Western contact. Makiko Itoh, do you know?) See Makiko Itoh . (more)Loading.

Makiko Itoh

Shiromuku (all-white costume for a bride in Japan) is definitely not influenced by the western white wedding dress tradtion. The latter became popular in the Victorian era. Shiromuku became popular in the Muromachi period (1336-1573) so precedes the white wedding dress custom by hundreds of years. (The groom gets to keep the same outfit on, unless he changes to a suit when the bride changes to a wedding dress)