What do you think about when picking your wedding dress?
"The color of the wedding dress is all about if I'm innocent or not"
"The idea is to be the best dressed at the wedding right?"
"It's a one day thing, so the dress is not a big deal"
If your answer above was 'C', then Sugar! Weddings has a lot of work to do on you. True, it is a one-day event, but your marriage is a lasting celebration. Your do not want your great-grandchildren to look at your wedding pictures and ask why your wedding dress was 'off'. You may also put yourself at risk of not being able to participate in the pass-on-the-wedding-dress tradition.
For those who answered 'A', kudos for embracing tradition. It is believed that only virgin brides were allowed to wear white dresses for their weddings. Somehow, the church and your family would know about your sexual doings and had the right to forbid you from wearing the traditional white dress. It was either that, or the bride's conscience that made her opt for wedding dresses in other colors, mostly ivory or light blue. However, I recently found out that the historical reference actually works the other way around. The color for weddings was always white, and in the old days, a bride was always a virgin, so the dress color wasn't as significant, until women started to explore sexuality outside marriage. It was in the mid 1800s that the white wedding dress began to signify virginity. At some point, blue was the color of purity and virginity, while a white wedding dress signified affluence.
The style diva answered 'B'. The world we live in promotes pre-marital sex and makes nothing of it. Parents find it difficult to believe the possibility that their unmarried children are still virgins, so they just assume that they aren't. So why stick with tradition if you really don't like white wedding dresses? Weddings are so extravagant these days that dresses are sometimes made to match the colors of the wedding. Yes, you may not think that white is one of the most beautiful colors for wedding dresses, and yes, the idea is to be the most breath-taking sight at the wedding. So you can either pick out hideous dresses for your bridesmaids to ensure they look ugly, or spoil yourself with the wedding dress you really want, whether it's white or not. Major wedding dress designers now provide dresses in different colors. If you're not bold enough to wear a red wedding dress, you can find a white wedding dress with red accents.
So feel free to pick out the dress you really want, as long as you LOVE it and it’s within your budget. I hear there are convertible dresses now that can be reused by changing it up a little bit. That way you’re not bothered by the ‘one time only’ bug. Have a Happy Wedding!
By Ayomide Fawole