White wedding dresses are post Queen Victoria who wore a white dress for
her wedding, until that time everyone wore their best dresses to get
married in. The tradition only started in Britain. However, for rites of
passage in the Catholic church girls generally wore white as a sign of
purity, hence white christening gowns, white first communion dresses and
veils, white confirmation dresses and veils (often the first Communion
veil reused). Young girls also had white dresses as their best dress
since coal tar dyes only became easily available in the mid 19th C.
White was relatively easy to care for since you could boil white cotton
and linen and 'bleach' it with lemon juice etc.
The coming out balls were essentially a marker for when a young woman
came onto the marriage market, hence 16 was the usual age at which this
happened. In Britain it was being presented at court BUT other places
had similar methods to advertise a young woman's readiness for marriage.
Anna from a cold and rainy Sydney
On 19/07/11 11:14 PM, pene piip wrote:
One period of time that has always intrigued me is the so-called Regency
period. Or during the Victorian era when young girls were presented at
court to the reigning monarch. The young girls of upper society would
traditionally wear long white ballgown dresses with trains & tiaras, etc.
If I had lived in that period & I'd been presented at court, I think my
white dress might have been worn again as a wedding gown. Isn't this a
possibility of the origin of white wedding dresses?
Unfortunately the year I was born Queen Elizabeth discontinued the
practice of being presented at court.
I tried to find out when debutantes were first presented at court &
found this article:
http://www.hrp.org.uk/KensingtonPalace/stories/exhibitions/introductiontothedebutantes.aspx
which mentions that it was a 200 year old tradition. Does anybody know
who & when it started?
I remember watching the TV series called "Love in a Cold Climate" (1980)
based on Nancy Mitford's books & reading them shortly after getting
married in 1981 & was then a novice lacemaker.
Pene in Tartu, Estonia
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