The Way We Wed

In 2010, Prince William—grandson to Queen Elizabeth II—and his girlfriend, Kate Middleton, announced their engagement to the public via a press conference attended by a throng of reporters and photographers (see Chapter 10). Middleton’s blue silk jersey wrap dress was chosen for the cameras to match her twelve-carat blue Ceylon sapphire engagement ring. It was the same ring Prince Charles had presented to William’s late mother, Princess Diana, nearly thirty years earlier; Diana reportedly chose it from a selection of rings because its vivid color—and enormous size—made it easily visible to the public. The ladylike, knee-grazing style of Middleton’s British-made Issa dress—paired with nylons and closed-toe black suede heels by Episode—declared her transition from commoner to queen-in-waiting, and set a precedent for her chic but conservative wardrobe as Duchess of Cambridge. In another harbinger of things to come, Middleton’s dress sold out within minutes, while cheap, hastily produced knockoffs flooded shops.

An elegant bride drops her quill in surprise as an unexpected clause derails the ceremony in Michel Garnier’s The Marriage Contract Interrupted (1789).

Each country has its own regional pre-wedding traditions, with their attendant sartorial traditions and requirements. Elisabeth of Bavaria wore a Polterabendkleid or “wedding eve dress” to the celebrations on the night before her marriage to Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria in 1854. Poltern is a German verb meaning “to crash” or “to make a racket”; a couple’s Polterabend was (and still is) a noisy pre-wedding party, often involving smashing porcelain for good luck. The royal bachelorette’s white organdy dress and its matching shawl were embroidered in green floss and gold metallic thread with floral motifs and Arabic characters, chosen for their decorative effect rather than their literal meaning, while also reflecting Austria’s deep historic ties to the Ottoman Empire.

A Japanese royal wedding can consist of up to twenty separate ceremonies, incorporating both traditional and modern dress. When Princess Sayako—the only daughter of Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko—married Yoshiki Kuroda in 2005, forfeiting her royal status, she donned the traditional jūnihitoe to visit the three imperial shrines, ritually informing her ancestors of her intention to marry three days later. Jūnihitoe—literally “the twelve layers”—was formal court dress during the Heian period (A.D. 794–1185); today, it is generally seen only in the contexts of royal weddings and enthronement ceremonies.

Several factors contribute to the prestige of this ancient garment. Its old age is, in itself, a measure of its importance; in many cultures and time periods, wedding clothes reference the fashions or traditions of the past. Its expense, as well as the time and expertise required to put on the twelve layers of robes, confine it to the upper echelons of society. The physical difficulty of wearing the jūnihitoe, which can weigh up to forty pounds, with grace is both a cause of and a comment on its high status. Only the borders of the inner eleven robes of colorful silk are visible; the choice and arrangement of colors changed with the seasons and indicated the wearer’s rank and savoir faire. The male equivalent is the sokutai: a robe with voluminous sleeves, color-coded according to rank, paired with a flat baton called a shaku—a vestigial scepter—and a lacquered black kanmuri hat. Like many Western wedding garments, these elaborate, expensive ensembles, rich in history and symbolism, reinforce the gravity of the vows being made, not only for the couple, but for their families and, sometimes, nations.

This is true of the clothing worn for pre- and post-wedding rites as well as for the ceremony itself. Indeed, these garments tend to survive where the actual wedding clothes have not, and may be worn repeatedly and seen by more people. Empress Sisi kept her Polterabendkleid but donated her white satin wedding gown embroidered with silver and gold to the church where she married, to be made into vestments, as was customary at the time. Only one part of it—her gold-embroidered court train, which was detachable and, presumably, reused—has survived intact. Princess Caroline Amalie’s engagement gown survives, but her wedding gown does not. Her will specified: “I wish it to be laid under my head in the Coffin.” Queen Victoria, too, had her lace wedding veil buried with her. A Polterabendkleid, jūnihitoe, or habit d’accord—much like the clothes purchased for modern-day engagement photos, bridal showers, rehearsal dinners, or bachelorette parties—might have less sentimental value than a wedding gown but represented a comparable investment of time, money, and taste. These garments mattered, not just because they set the tone for the wedding itself, but because they marked the beginning steps in the journey of marriage.

This has not always been the case. If royal marriages were arranged to create dynastic alliances, wedding clothes reinforced those alliances; appearance was everything. In some cases, brides had to undress and put on new clothes at the border as they entered their new country, symbolically shedding their foreign identities. They adopted new hairstyles, cosmetics, and languages. At the very least, they were expected to wear clothes made in their new homelands for their weddings, even if they closely resembled the clothes worn in their ancestral courts. Wedding clothes might be woven or embroidered with patriotic or dynastic imagery, or derived from regional folk dress. In 1956, Archduke Joseph Árpád of Austria wore “the robes of a once mighty nobility” for his wedding, according to LIFE magazine: a sable-trimmed mente, a jacket usually worn thrown over the shoulders. Princess Charlene of Monaco wore Armani for her 2011 wedding to Prince Albert, but her seven child bridesmaids wore the country’s national dress: flat straw hats, lace-up slippers, and dresses in a rustic eighteenth-century style, embellished with personal touches, like silk stockings and aprons embroidered with the couple’s monogram.

Depending on the country, royal weddings might last days or weeks and include a variety of different ceremonies and events, all with their own wardrobe requirements. In 1810, Crown Prince Ludwig threw a massive public party in Munich in honor of his wedding to Princess Therese; it is still celebrated every year as Oktoberfest. Royal grooms might don armor for celebratory jousting tournaments. The wedding of Caliph Sidi Muley el Hassan and Princess Lal-la in Morocco in 1949 went on for fifteen days. LIFE magazine photographer Dmitri Kessel remembered:

There were daily receptions in the caliph’s palace—lunches and dinners where men sat on cushions around low tables and consumed great quantities of roast lamb, chicken cooked with almonds, chicken cooked with green olives, chicken cooked with honey. During the celebrations the guests ate 15,000 chickens and 3,000 lambs, washed down with vats of fruit juices; good Muslims, they did not drink alcohol. No women were present except at the last dinner.… The bride-to-be was never seen.

Royal trousseaux were equally elaborate. A trousseau—from the French term trousse, meaning “bundle”—was the supply of clothing, lingerie, and table linens a bride brought to her marriage; it usually included clothes for the wedding and honeymoon, if not the entire first year of marriage. When Queen Victoria’s oldest daughter, Princess Vicky, married in 1858, her trousseau filled a hundred packing cases and included not only dozens of gowns but fabric, carpets, wallpaper, furniture, and saddles. Vicky’s niece, Princess Marie of Edinburgh, who married Crown Prince Ferdinand of Romania in 1893, remembered:

Mama gave me a wonderful trousseau, a real princess’s trousseau in keeping with that time of prosperity and abundance.… I… loved clothes, furs and precious gems, but I was astonished at the masses of dresses, cloaks, hats, handkerchiefs, stockings, shoes and fine linen that I was supposed to need. All these manifold treasures were put out in a large room and I, with my sisters and many friends, used to walk about amongst them, awed by their magnitude. Getting married was certainly a stirring event.

And when Princess May, another daughter of Queen Victoria, married the Duke of York in the same year, her trousseau included forty suits, fifteen ball gowns, and five afternoon gowns, with all their accessories. Crown Princess Stéphanie of Austria—the Belgian-born widow of Archduke Rudolf—remarried in 1900. Her trousseau was so large that a special train was required to transport it from Vienna.

Royal trousseaux and wedding gifts were considered state property, to some extent, and displayed and itemized for public consumption (and fashion inspiration). When Princess Margaret of Connaught married the Crown Prince of Sweden in 1905, her trousseau and presents went on display at Clarence House in London, including gowns by Paquin and Lucile and an enviable assortment of jewelry. Nevertheless, the newspaper The Sphere complained: “It is a great disappointment that so little of [her] trousseau is on view, but with few exceptions the dresses and lingerie are being sent direct to Sweden.”

White first emerged as a popular choice for gowns of all kinds in the eighteenth century; inevitably, some women chose white gowns for their weddings, but it was because they were fashionable (and luxurious) rather than because of any symbolism attached to the color. Fashion plates of the time depict bridal gowns of red, blue, and other vivid hues. When the Magasin des modes nouvelles illustrated a white wedding gown in 1787, the editors stressed that the quality of the fabric, not its color, was the most important consideration: “One always chooses that which is the most rich and the most elegant.” It was perfectly acceptable and, indeed, expected for women to wear their wedding gowns again and again, regardless of color.

THE BRIDE WORE SILVER

But royal brides were held to a different standard. For royal weddings, brides and grooms alike frequently wore cloth of silver, an extremely expensive fabric woven with real silver threads that had been reserved by law for the nobility since the seventeenth century. A reigning monarch might even wear cloth of gold. Catherine the Great wore cloth of silver for her 1744 wedding. When she married the future King Louis XVI in the Royal Chapel of the Palace of Versailles in 1770, Marie-Antoinette wore cloth of silver trimmed with gold filigree but omitted the ermine-trimmed cloak of purple velvet, approximately thirty-three feet long, that would have been worn by the bride of a reigning monarch. One wedding guest, the Duchess of Northumberland, remarked that the fourteen-year-old bride was “very fine in Diamonds. She really had quite a Load of Jewels.”

As royal wedding gowns go, it’s hard to top the one worn by Princess Sofia Magdalena of Denmark when she married the future King Gustave III of Sweden at Stockholm Palace in 1766. With a hoop petticoat measuring six feet across and a ten-foot train, the bride was wider—and longer—than she was high. The cloth of silver was further embellished with a woven floral and lace pattern. In total, twenty-seven yards of the precious fabric were required to make the glittering gown fit for a future queen. Her husband, the Crown Prince, was equally resplendent in a three-piece suit of cloth of silver, embroidered in silver and gold.

Royal weddings required the bride, groom, and guests alike to wear court dress. For women of the eighteenth century, this meant the grand habit, loosely translated as “formal dress.” In the 1670s, King Louis XIV personally invented this three-piece ensemble consisting of a low-necked, sleeveless bodice; a skirt; and a separate train attached at the waist. Even at its first appearance at the court of Versailles, it was a hybrid of new and old, as the aging king tried to revive the female fashions he had admired in his youth. The bare shoulders and back-laced bodice stiffened with ribs of whalebone (the contemporary name for baleen, the rigid, hairlike substance that takes the place of teeth in some whales) harked back to the fashions of the 1660s. The length of the train and, sometimes, the materials and colors of the grand habit corresponded to a woman’s social status.

By 1700, the grand habit had been adopted as formal female court dress throughout Europe, from Spain to Russia, with only minor regional variations—a powerful testament to French fashion’s dominance. (Indeed, the Swedish ambassador to the court of Versailles purchased Gustave and Sofia Magdalena’s wedding clothes in Paris.) It remained in use for more than one hundred years because it was a remarkably effective vehicle for showing off costly textiles, trimmings, embroidery, and jewels, as well as elegant posture and deportment. Men, too, wore court dress, but it generally consisted of a more opulent version of fashionable dress, while the grand habit was absolutely unique to the court.

Due to a culture of enthusiastic preservation dating back to the early seventeenth century, several royal wedding gowns have survived in the Swedish Royal Armoury; they are rare examples of what was, at the time, an international courtly style. The 1823 wedding ensembles of Crown Prince Oscar and Princess Joséphine of Leuchtenberg illustrate the evolution in fashion from the late eighteenth century to the early nineteenth, dramatically accelerated by the social upheavals of the French Revolution, which impacted fashion all over Europe.

While retaining the rich metallic textiles and embroideries of the previous century, the silhouettes reflect the trends of the time: close-fitting coats and long trousers (instead of knee-length breeches) for men, and high waistlines, slim skirts, and short, puffed sleeves for women. Yet no one would mistake Oscar and Joséphine’s wedding clothes for everyday dress; apart from the sumptuous fabrics, they include archaic elements that would only be worn at court, such as her train (which is detachable) and antiquated gathered and slashed sleeves, and his somewhat theatrical cape, shoulder tabs, and tall boots, which recall the fashions of the seventeenth century. Gustave III had instituted a romantic “national costume” inspired by the dress of Sweden’s Golden Age as court and official dress in 1778, and vestiges of it continued to be worn at court until the late twentieth century; even today, ladies-in-waiting wear it at Swedish royal weddings.