The Bride Wore White
Blame it on Queen Victoria.
Everything from prudishness to plaid to World War I is laid at her door, rightly or wrongly, but in the case of white wedding gowns, it’s actually pretty accurate.
Upper-class and royal brides had occasionally worn white, as far back as Ancient Rome. In 1558, Mary, Queen of Scots married the heir to the French throne in what was then a traditional mourning color, sparking much talk of bad luck…and it’s hard to argue, considering how the marriage, and the Scottish queen’s life, turned out. Spoiler: early widowhood, two more disastrous marriages, and a date with the headsman.
When Victoria chose a creamy white satin dress for her marriage to Prince Albert, her main goal was supporting the struggling British silk and lace industry. The gown, of Spitalfields silk and Honiton lace, was probably the most famous piece of clothing in the world at the time, and it set the example. And, thanks to the Industrial Revolution and the rising middle class, there were plenty of brides willing and able to follow it.
Extravagant white dresses quickly filtered through the upper levels of society, with aristocratic and well-off women eagerly adopting pristine silks and laces. By the time Victoria’s daughters married, the white dress was standard for everyone who could afford it, a statement that the bride came from a family who could buy her an expensive dress she would never wear again.
White wedding dresses, by the way, did not start as an announcement of the bride’s innocence. As the fashion spread, though, it became intertwined with all the Victorian ideas about female purity. Eventually, a white dress was seen not just as the prerogative of the first-time bride, but a declaration that her family was delivering untouched merchandise to the altar.
In some circles, a bride did at least get some wear out of the gown. In the American South, it was traditional for a new bride to don her wedding gear for a weeks- or monthslong series of visits and social events surrounding the marriage. Many women also saved their dresses, to be altered and reused by daughters or other female relatives. Surviving gowns in museums have often been remade for changing fashions.
When a bride couldn’t afford a white dress with its limited usefulness but still had the money for something, she often bought or made the most beautiful dress she could manage in a more serviceable color, to keep as Sunday best. For many Victorian women, the Sunday best dress was black, but a bride would try to avoid that if she could – think of all the people who told Laura Ingalls Wilder: “marry in black, you’ll wish yourself back.”
A Sunday-best dress was also the choice for older or second-time brides. Advice and etiquette books sternly warned senior brides (meaning late-20s and after!) to avoid trying to look like “mutton dressed as lamb.” And remarriages, however loving and joyful, were expected to be relatively quiet.
Many of these Sunday-best wedding dresses have also survived, though, because they were special to their owners. They’re often made of lovely fabrics, beautifully detailed and trimmed, every bit as much an expression of love, joy, and hope as the frilly whites.
In A Fatal Reception, set in June of 1900, opera diva Ella Shane ticks all the social boxes for a white gown, and thanks to her successful career, has the resources to splash out. So when Ella meets her Duke at the altar, she’s a vision in pristine satin, lace, and tulle, complete with a crown of orange blossoms Queen Victoria herself would envy. Things take a dramatic and unconventional turn after that…but you’ll have to read the book to find out how!
A Fatal Reception
An Ella Shane Mystery, Book 1
Gilded Age trouser diva Ella Shane and her Duke are at long last headed for the altar…but they’ll have to handle a murder, a shipwreck, a questionable Polish prince, and any number of other complications on the way. Continuing the highly-praised series featuring an Irish-Jewish Lower East Side orphan who found fame and fortune as a singer of male soprano roles, the latest installment follows Ella and her surprisingly diverse cast of family and friends through mystery and misadventure…and into the greatest challenge of all for an independent-minded woman and her Victorian swain: matrimony!
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