Wedding dresses: The Major Styles Preceding The Victorian Era

One of the primary factors a bride-to-be will probably look at when it comes to setting up her wedding ceremony is the wedding dress. It's hardly surprising because a wedding dress is much more than simply a lovely garment; it is a very emblematic and culturally noteworthy item of clothing that marks a woman's move from single lady to wedded female. What's more, wedding dresses possess a long history of use dating back thousands of years.

The habit of donning wedding dresses can be said to go back to the age of the early Egyptians that was the first civilization to consider marriage to be a bonafide legal bond between 2 people. Although there was no specific legal or religious ceremony associated with having a wedding back then, those who could afford to pay for it celebrated the day with a huge banquet. The new bride would probably have worn a linen dress with jewellery made from gold inset with lapis lazuli stone. On the other hand, the stones she wore could have been green-colored, a hue that represented fertility in the ancient Egyptian period.

In ancient Greece, wedding dresses were long, white-colored tunics with a Herculean tie at the back that the bridegroom was supposed to untie in the wedding ceremony. In those times, the white-colored shade of the wedding dress symbolized joy, rather than purity, which became associated with white bridal dresses in more recent times. The Herculean tie on the woman's dress represented eternal love, which, we can only suppose, did not require a similarly Herculean effort on the groom's part to loosen it!
Just like their Grecian sisters, the brides of old Rome also wore long white tunics although with a girdle. Probably the most emblematic element of a Roman bride's bridal outfit was a rectangular translucent veil called a 'flammeum' which, as the name suggests, was a fiery red or flame-like color. Nevertheless, the 'flammeum' didn't at any moment go over the bride's facial area, unlike the white veils that lots of modern-day brides use when they proceed up the aisle to meet up with their future spouses. Having said that, women in early Roman times typically wore their wedding dresses only once, as their contemporary counterparts do.
In the Middle Ages, women dressed in as opulent a gown as their family could afford, generally in a bright and cheerful shade. Crimson, silver and gold were popular hues for the wedding party and the nobility often dressed in garments made out of superior fabrics like silk stitched with silver or gold twine. Fur and gemstones were also popular embellishments among the well-off set, as were wigs created from the hair of peasants.

The Napoleonic Age saw the introduction of the 'Empire' silhouette of costume that continues to be a very well-known design of bodice for ladies' garments even now. For example, it's not difficult to buy empire wedding dresses from online dresses shops. In the late eighteenth century, brides donned chemise-like wedding dresses with waistlines so high that they were situated right under the bust line. This uncomplicated, narrow silhouette had a skirt with minimal gathering and by the year 1800 had become characterized by a square, low-cut neckline with tiny puffed sleeves on the shoulders.
The wedding gowns of history have had an enormous effect on modern luxury wedding dresses, and vestiges of these early designs continue to appear in lots of the wedding dresses that exist on the market nowadays.