Ruben B. Hughes 
Since weddings are back in full force after the coronavirus crisis forced the cancellation of indoor events, brides are making their own rules. And what rules is black.
“It’s our hottest trend,” said Laura McKeever, Pennsylvania-based public relations manager for David’s Bridal, America’s largest wedding dress chain, with 300 stores nationwide.
Hundreds of requests from brides prompted their merchandise team to turn their best-selling $999 white dresses — ball gowns, mermaids, sleek silhouettes — into black options as well, McKeever said. While they were only personalized, the style is so popular that they will hit stores soon so brides can try them on first.
“Fashion is a way to express your individuality and a wedding dress is no different. don’t wait. This is the time. Life is too short,” McKeever said. “And they want their day to be the way they want it, wearing what’s most comfortable and best looking. Aside from the dramatic, chic and unexpected look, black can be more flattering and practical. If you spend a lot on a dress, you want to wear it again.
Small traders see the same thing.
“We’ve had about 15 calls for black dresses recently,” said Maria Valentina Talamo, who works at Pronovias, a luxury wedding draper on Manhattan’s Park Avenue, with dresses costing between $2,000 and $20,000.
The change started with popular black dresses in 2020, she recalled.
“So many brides have had to postpone everything during the pandemic. Now they want to break traditions, stand out, be unique and make a statement.
When I said “yes” all those moons ago, I definitely did.
After many painful breakups, I felt blessed to find my love for life.. Yet, as a broke 35-year-old freelance writer who paid the bills while teaching, I had no money to waste on a white garment that I would only use once, let alone storage costs. and dry cleaning. The darker shade was less likely to smudge and also thin. Plus, as a loudmouth with two jobs and three brothers, I prided myself on being a tough-talking city guy. I banished the word “obey” from our vows and rejected the white robe which pushed back against archaic notions of feminine innocence, chastity, modesty and modesty.
It was Queen Victoria’s white silk and lace dress for her 1840 nuptials to Prince Albert that put milky dresses on the map of American brides, Rebecca Mead wrote in her 2003 New Yorker article “You’re Getting Married: The Wal-martization of the Bridal Business.”
“Custom from time immemorial has chosen white as an appropriate hue emblematic of the freshness and purity of youth,” asserted an article from 1849 in The Lady of Godey’s Bookaccording Marlise Schoeny, curator of The Ohio State University’s Historical Costume and Textiles Collection. In “Why brides wear whiteshe explains that “a traditional grand wedding with the bride wearing a white princess-style wedding dress has become a symbol of the American dream. From World War II to the end of the 20th century, the white dress symbolized the prosperity, virginity, and a lifelong commitment to a person.For most people today, these meanings have disappeared.
In effect. My hilarious screenwriter husband laughed at my dark dress, but not everyone applauded my sartorial statement.
“If you don’t wear white to your wedding, then I am,” said my kind Jewish mother from Michigan. And she did.
After my wedding, I happily took my black wedding dress to a tailor to have it shortened. Still in my closet, I’ve worn it often over the years.
While surfing the channel not too long ago, I came across TLC’s reality show”say yes to the dressand was happy to see a Brooklyn bride in a shimmering black ballgown that was selling for an incredible $5,170. I was annoyed when she pivoted to a pale vintage. I felt the same way when Sarah Jessica Parker said she regretted wearing blacktelling Martha Stewart Weddings that she should have chosen a white taffeta or satin dress instead.
Then again, after announcing that I was walking down the aisle in Morticia mode, my mother was hurt. She was orphaned without a mother at her own wedding, and I was her only child — so her only shot at the mother of the bride, she told Us. What she wanted was to have a second wedding in Michigan her own way – with her rabbi, her cantor, her chuppah and her Midwestern crowd, where I would put on a pearl-colored dress she had chosen for a evening. (It was later gifted to her best friend’s daughter, for good karma.)
After an emergency session with my shrink, I found myself in Michigan dressed in white. I said “yes” twice in two different cities to the same man, realizing that no matter what material I had, only that I was lucky to be surrounded by love.
Susan Shapiro, writing teacher, is the author of the memoirs “The Forgiveness Tour” and “Five men who broke my heart“, has recently opted for a film.
