20 Wedding Dresses That Were Never White, From Red Silk To Mourning Black

Wallis Simpson, the American divorcee whose relationship with King Edward VIII led to his abdication in 1936, married the former monarch on June 3, 1937, in a ceremony in the French Château de Candé. As a twice-divorced bride who had chosen to wed in exile and in private, she felt that white would not be appropriate. So instead, she wore a powder-blue silk dress by the American designer Mainbocher, dyed to match her eyes, and people started referring to the hue as “Wallis Blue.” The former king and his new wife, now the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, remained married until the duke’s death in 1972.

The queen of Scotland, Mary, married her second husband, Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley, on July 29, 1565, at Holyrood Palace in Edinburgh. Mary had selected a black velvet mourning (“dule”) dress because she was technically still mourning her first husband, King Francis II of France, who had died five years earlier. Following the ceremony, Mary changed into brighter robes for the wedding feast. The couple’s marriage proved unsuccessful. Darnley was murdered two years later.

Between the establishment of the Ming Dynasty in 1368 and the middle of the 20th century, Chinese brides wore a red silk gown called a fengguan xiapei. A few may have accessorized their attire with a phoenix crown and cape. Red symbolized fire, good luck, and life. Embroidery in gold or silver depicting dragons and phoenixes signified union. White, being associated with funerals and mourning of deceased family members, was generally avoided by brides. Today, some brides wear dresses of both hues.

On May 2, 1816, Princess Charlotte of Wales, daughter of the future King George IV, married Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld at Carlton House in London. Her dressmaker, Mrs. Triaud, constructed the dress with silver tissue underneath a layer of silk net and embellished it with silver thread in the form of flowers and shells. It formed part of an opulent collection of dresses, all featuring lace and jewels, for her wedding, which was said to have cost £10,000. The dress survives and is therefore the oldest known British royal wedding gown.

Hindu brides in the Indian subcontinent predominantly wore red, crimson, or deep pink silk sarees in styles such as the South Indian Kanjeevaram or the North Indian Banarasi, embellished with gold thread or zari. Red was thought of as a color of the goddess Durga, a representation of passion and fertility in married life. They also generally avoided wearing plain white at all, as it was the color of widows and funerals, not weddings.

During the 19th and early 20th centuries, brides from many religions throughout the Ottoman Empire wore the Bindallı, which means “a thousand branches.” Worn by Muslim, Christian, and Jewish people, this lavish dress was made of silk velvet in shades of burgundy, dark red, purple, or navy. It was embroidered all over with gold thread, called dival work, in patterns of flowering vines and branches that symbolized joy, wealth, and spiritual light.

The marriage of Mary I of England (England’s first queen regnant) to Prince Philip of Spain (the future Philip II) took place in Winchester Cathedral on July 25, 1554. The queen regnant wore a dress of gold cloth overlaid on royal purple satin with an underdress of embroidered white satin in silver thread. Philip donned his own gold mantle lined with crimson velvet, a gift from Mary. The use of purple and gold was a declaration of sovereign authority, not a fashion trend.

In Korea, from 1392 to 1910, the Joseon dynasty restricted commoners from wearing the bright hues reserved for royalty, with a wedding being the sole exception to these strict sumptuary laws. On her wedding day, a commoner’s bride wore a green silk outer robe with rainbow-striped sleeve cuffs called a wonsam and a deep red skirt with gold leaf stamps expressing hopes for wealth and long life. That was the only time a common woman could dress like a noble.

In 19th- and early 20th-century Spain (especially in the countryside), a Catholic bride wore a black silk gown with a black lace veil, called a mantilla, held up by a tall comb. Black was considered the height of elegance and piety. It signified a promise of faithfulness “until death do us part,” not mourning. In fact, church rules prohibited weddings during periods when the family was actively mourning.

In 1841, in Skirbeck, Lincolnshire, a working-class bride named Sarah Maria Wright married a farm laborer named Daniel Neal. Just one year after Queen Victoria’s famous white wedding, Sarah chose not to copy Victoria’s fragile white lace, but instead dressed in a sturdy washable cotton dress block-printed with red, pink and blue flowers. Perfect for years of wear as a laborer’s wife, her dress now hangs in London’s Victoria and Albert Museum. Many rural brides continued to favor practical, colorful fabrics long after Victoria’s wedding.

Shinto weddings became the standard ceremony for Japanese couples in the 20th century, and many brides still follow this tradition today. The bride would wear a simple white kimono called the shiromuku for the ceremony to symbolize her purity. After the ceremony, she would change into an iro-uchikake for the reception. This would be a thickly padded silk robe, usually scarlet, gold, or black, with embroidery of cranes and pine trees to wish for a long life. The day would start in white and end in color.

During Classical Greece, between 500 and 300 BCE, brides would dress in a saffron-colored robe called a krokotos, dyed with stamens from the crocus flower. They would also wear a golden- or red-colored veil in honor of the Greek god Hymen of marriage and the fertility goddesses Aphrodite and Artemis. As people typically wore white linen for daily activities and burial, saffron was reserved for bridal wear.

On April 8, 1795, Princess Caroline of Brunswick wed her cousin George, Prince of Wales, the future King George IV, at the Chapel Royal, St James’s Palace in London. As was the Georgian royal custom, she wore a gown of woven silver tissue and wrapped herself in silver lace. Her crimson velvet robe was lined with ermine. The weight of the metal fabric and jewels allegedly weighed on her visibly for the entire ceremony.

Harriett Joyce, a lady’s maid and an accomplished needlewoman, married Percy Raven Sams, a railway clerk, in Earlsfield, Middlesex, England, in October 1899. Harriett sewed her own purple jacket and skirt, trimmed with cream satin and lace. The late-Victorian etiquette of the day dictated that white was reserved for very young, maiden brides. A woman in her 30s, like Harriett, would wear a richer color like purple, plum, or navy. Harriett’s wedding outfit can be seen at the Victoria and Albert Museum today.

Brides at traditional Yoruba weddings (Igbeyawo) in southwestern Nigeria wore outfits woven from aso oke, cloth produced on narrow strip looms, consisting of a wrapper, blouse, shoulder sash, and head tie. Families signaled their social standing through two colors passed down from generation to generation. These were alaari, a dark red color dyed with camwood, and sanyan, a golden brown silk spun from wild cocoons.

In rural Ukraine, a bride was attired in a hand-embroidered linen tunic called a vyshyvanka, which she would wear over a woven red skirt and red coral beads. The tight red and black cross-stitches on the clothing were significant. Red symbolized life and love, and dark meant fertile earth. She would wear a vinok, a crown made from paper flowers dipped in wax and tied with red or colored satin ribbons, thought to protect her on her wedding day.

Peasant brides in rural Finland wore black at their weddings between the late 1700s and early 1900s, which reflected the Lutheran church’s sensibilities about proper wedding attire and made good economic sense. The dress, known as the musta hääpuku, was typically made of homespun wool or, for more affluent families, imported silk. It was worn with a gilded bridal crown, colorful ribbons, and white lace collars on the day of the wedding. Afterward, it served as the woman’s best outfit to wear to church for many years, until she died and was buried in it.

From around the 6th century BCE until the 5th century CE in classical Rome, brides wore a plain white wool tunic (tunica recta) tied at the waist with a knot the groom would untie at the ceremony. Over it, they draped a flame-colored (flammeum) veil dyed a bright saffron-yellow or orange-red, and wore saffron shoes. The color was associated with the high priestess of Jupiter, head of the pantheon of Roman gods, and was thought to ward off evil spirits.

Moroccan brides did not simply wear a single dress. Instead, they wore a layered ceremonial outfit called a takchita, which included a delicate underdress and a heavy, open outer garment in either velvet or brocade, often emerald green or royal crimson and trimmed in gold. In Morocco, green is symbolic of blessings and paradise in Islam, while red symbolizes life and fertility. The whole ensemble was cinched together by a wide gold belt and accompanying jewelry.

Monica Maurice was a pioneering engineer and the first woman to join the Association of Mining Electrical Engineers. On June 18, 1938, Maurice married Dr. Arthur Jackson in the Chapel of Our Lady in Rotherham, South Yorkshire. She didn’t wear white. Instead, she chose a ruby-red silk gauze dress with a high neck and a royal blue belt, simply because she liked the color. She was also a licensed pilot and driver, and very much her own person.

This content was created with the help of AI.