Editing White wedding (section)

== History of the white dress and traditions==
[[File:Wed-dress-001.jpg|thumb|left|upright|A [[bride]] from the late 19th century wearing a black or dark coloured wedding dress]]

Though [[Mary, Queen of Scots]], wore a white wedding gown in 1559 when she married her first husband, [[Francis II of France|Francis Dauphin of France]], the tradition of a white wedding dress is commonly credited to [[Victoria of the United Kingdom|Queen Victoria's]] choice to wear a [[Wedding dress of Queen Victoria|white court dress at her wedding]] to [[Albert of Saxe Coburg-Gotha|Prince Albert]] in 1840.<ref name="Otnes 2003 p.31">{{cite book |last1= Otnes |first1= Cele |last2= Pleck |first2= Elizabeth |name-list-style= amp |year= 2003 |title= Cinderella Dreams: the Allure of the Lavish Wedding |url= https://archive.org/details/cinderelladreams00otne |url-access= limited |page= [https://archive.org/details/cinderelladreams00otne/page/n47 31] |publisher= University of California Press |location= Berkeley|isbn= 9780520240087 }}</ref><ref name=Vicky>{{cite book |last= Howard |first= Vicky |year= 2006 |title= Brides Inc.: American Weddings and the Business of Tradition |pages= 157–159 |publisher= University of Pennsylvania Press |location= Philadelphia}}</ref> [[Debutantes]] had long been required to wear white [[Court uniform and dress in the United Kingdom#Women's court dress|court dresses]] and [[evening glove|long white gloves]] for their first presentation at court, at a "Drawing Room" where they were introduced to the queen for the first time.<ref name="Otnes 2003 p.31"/>

[[File:Wedding of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert.jpg|thumb|Queen Victoria and Prince Albert on their return from the marriage service at St James's Palace, London, 10 February 1840.]]
Royal brides before Victoria did not typically wear white, instead choosing "heavy brocaded gowns embroidered with white and silver thread," with red being a particularly popular colour in Western Europe more generally.<ref name="Otnes 2003 p.31"/> During this time, European and American brides wore a plethora of colours, including blue, yellow, and practical colours like black, brown, or gray. As accounts of Victoria's wedding spread across the Atlantic and throughout Europe, fashionable people followed her lead.

The traditional white wedding was not necessarily defined by the color of the dress only. The wedding of Queen Victoria's daughter [[Victoria, Princess Royal|Victoria]] to [[Frederick III, German Emperor|Prince Fredrick William of Prussia]] in 1858 also introduced choral music to the processional when standard practice had been to have music of any kind only during a party after the wedding ceremony.<ref>{{cite book |last= Pleck |first=  Elisabeth |year= 2000 |title= Celebrating the Family: Ethnicity, Consumer Culture and Family Rituals |url= https://archive.org/details/celebratingfamil0000plec |url-access= registration |page= [https://archive.org/details/celebratingfamil0000plec/page/212 212] |publisher= Harvard University Press |location= Cambridge, MA}}</ref>

Because of the limitations of laundering techniques before the later part of the 20th century, white dresses provided an opportunity for [[conspicuous consumption]]. They were favored primarily as a way to show the world that the bride's family was so wealthy and so firmly part of the leisure class that the bride would choose an elaborate dress that could be ruined by any sort of work or spill.<ref name="Ingrassia">{{cite book |last=Ingrassia |first=Catherine |editor-last=Curran |editor-first=Colleen |title=Altared: Bridezillas, Bewilderment, Big Love, Breakups, and What Women Really Think about Contemporary Weddings |publisher=Vintage Books |location=New York |year=2007 |chapter=Diana, Martha and Me |pages=[https://archive.org/details/altaredbridezill0000unse/page/24 24–30] |isbn=978-0-307-27763-3 |chapter-url=https://archive.org/details/altaredbridezill0000unse/page/24 }}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last=Ramshaw |first=Gail |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=MjZLAwAAQBAJ |title=Words around the Font |date=6 September 2004 |publisher=Wipf and Stock Publishers |isbn=9781592449255 |page=111}}[https://luvbridal.com.au/]</ref>

[[Christian head covering|Women were required to wear veils in many Christian churches]] through the mid-20th century;<ref name="Gordon2015">{{cite web |last1=Gordon |first1=Greg |title=Are Head Coverings Really for Today? |url=https://evangelicalfocus.com/yourblog/929/Are-Head-Coverings-Really-for-Today- |publisher=Evangelical Focus |access-date=2 May 2022 |language=English |date=31 August 2015 |quote=Hippolytus an early Church Father wrote, “Let all the women have their heads covered.” Others who taught this practice in the Church were, John Calvin [father of the Reformed tradition], Martin Luther [father of the Lutheran tradition], Early Church Fathers, John Wesley [father of the Methodist tradition], Matthew Henry [Presbyterian theologian] to name just a few. We must remind ourselves that until the twentieth century, virtually all Christian women wore head coverings.}}</ref> the resurgence of the wedding veil as a symbol of the bride, and its use even when not required by the bride's religion, coincided with societal emphasis on women being [[modesty|modest]] and well-behaved.<ref name=Ingrassia />

Etiquette books then began to turn the practice into a tradition and the white gown soon became a popular symbol of status that also carried "a connotation of innocence and virginal purity."<ref name=Vicky/> The story put out about the wedding veil was that decorous brides were naturally too timid to show their faces in public until they were married.

By the end of the 19th century the white dress was the garment of choice for elite brides on both sides of the Atlantic. However, middle-class British and American brides did not adopt the trend fully until after [[World War II]].<ref>{{cite book |last= Jellison |first= Katherine |year= 2008 |title= It's Our Day: America's Love Affair with the White Wedding, 1945–2005 |pages= 65–67 |publisher= University Press of Kansas |location= Lawrence}}</ref> With increased prosperity in the 20th century, the tradition also grew to include the practice of wearing the dress only once. As historian Vicky Howard writes, "[i]f a bride wore white in the nineteenth century, it was acceptable and likely that she wore her gown again".<ref name=Vicky/> Even Queen Victoria had her famous lace wedding dress re-styled for later use.<ref name=Ingrassia />

After World War I, as full-scale formal weddings began to be desired by the mothers of brides who did not have a permanent social secretary, the position of the [[wedding planner]], who could coordinate the printer, florist, caterer and seamstress, began to assume importance. The first edition of ''Bride's Magazine'' was published in 1934 as a newspaper advertising insert called ‘So You're Going to Get Married!’ in a column entitled ‘To the Bride’ and its rival ''[[Conde Nast Publications|Modern Bride]]'' began publishing in 1949. 

The portrayal of weddings in [[Cinema of the United States|Hollywood]] movies, particularly immediately after World War II, helped crystallize and homogenize the white wedding into a normative form.<ref name=Martin>{{cite book |last= Martin |first= Judith |title=Miss Manners' Guide to Excruciatingly Correct Behavior |publisher= Norton |location=New York |year=2005 |isbn=0-393-05874-3 |page=371 |quote=The supposition behind these questions is that a wedding is a set piece, with rigidly prescribed roles....The pattern that so many modern brides apparently have in mind can be traced to Hollywood, California, circa 1948.}}</ref>