10 Celebrity Brides Who Didn’t Wear White

December 3, 2013

Does the thought of spending several thousand dollars on a wedding dress you will wear just once cause a little anxiety? When it comes to the dress, there are many money saving options for brides. Whether you scour the sample sales, find the perfect dress at a second hand store, or sew the dress yourself, you’ll be saving big bucks.

But there’s another option you may not have considered: choose a non-traditional colored dress. The white wedding dress is nothing more than a social trend in western culture; not a hard and fast rule. Why not buck tradition and show your independence by wearing a colored wedding dress?

By skipping the bridal boutiques and focusing instead on gorgeous formalwear, you automatically lose the huge mark-up associated with all things “wedding.” You’ll also hark back to a bygone era when wedding dresses could be just about any nice dress.

Wedding Dress Color History

Before 1840, brides’ wedding dresses could be any color, even black. White had traditionally been reserved as a color of mourning and therefore not commonly used for weddings. Styles ranged from opulent, with rich fabrics, furs and laces, to humble, where a bride could be found wearing her best “church” dress.

Queen Victoria set the white wedding dress trend with her marriage to Prince Albert in 1840. Because her wedding portrait was highly publicized, many became enamored with her bridal look and wanted to copy it. That copying still goes on today as most wedding dresses are white, or some close cousin of the color, like ivory or cream.

Eventually, white replaced blue as a symbol for purity and the white wedding dress took on another layer of meaning and further cemented itself in our collective consciousness.

Celebrity Colored Wedding Dresses

If you choose a colored, non-traditional wedding dress for your ceremony, not only do your choices expand and your bank account breathe a sigh of relief, you will also find yourself in good company. Many celebrities have chosen gorgeous, colored wedding dresses for their big day.