little White Wedding History

Posted by Olivier Lalin -

From ancient times to the present, weddings have always been important religious ceremonies and social occasions. While some wedding traditions, customs, and fashions have withstood the test of time, our modern conceptions of weddings, particularly the white wedding, are primarily a 19th century creation.

The white wedding first became fashionable during the Victorian era, roughly 1840 to 1900, with the marriage of Queen Victoria to Prince Albert. Before that time, it was quite common for a woman to wear the best dress that she owned, whatever color it may have been. At other times, a particular color was fashionable for wedding attire. Roman brides often chose to wear yellow, while women in the 16th and 17th centuries preferred pale green. It was not until the early 19th century that white became a fashionable color to wear at formal occasions. And it was not until white became fashionable as the color for a woman's wedding gown in the mid-19th century that it became associated with the purity and innocence we associate it with today. Even so, our modern concepts of white are quite different from the Victorians'. Thus, today we would consider "white" from this time period as more of a cream color.



After the inception of the white wedding in the mid-19th century, wedding fashions continued to change. While the continuity of the "white" wedding is apparent, each dress is unique and indicative of the fashion of its particular time. Each dress is also significant because of the women who wore it. Many of the dresses were shared among sisters or passed down from mother to daughter. So, while each is representative of a particular time period, they all reflect the continuity of marriage and the strong ties of family...
taken from Sumter County Museum


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