In the Victorian era, bridesmaids often wore white.

Victorian-era wedding party

There are few wedding guest gaffes more serious than wearing white. In Western culture, that color is traditionally reserved for the bride, so even the plainest white dress can be considered upstaging. And yet, in England’s Victorian era, when etiquette was of the utmost importance, bridesmaids often wore white, thanks to the influence of the queen herself.

Queen Victoria is often credited with popularizing the white wedding dress in the Western world, after wearing one for her 1840 nuptials when she married Prince Albert. But it wasn’t just Victoria who wore white — her bridesmaids did too, in dresses the monarch helped design.

That said, the queen didn’t invent the idea of the white gown for brides: White, especially with silver, was a popular color choice among those wealthy enough to buy an impractical dress for the occasion. But Victoria’s wedding fashion, combined with the burgeoning Industrial Revolution lowering the price of many garments, the advent of photography, and the emergence of women’s magazines, made both white gowns and white bridesmaids dresses popular across class lines. In the following decades, bridesmaids often dressed in a less-extravagant version of the bride’s outfit, complete with a (shorter) veil.

Over time, new, vibrant dyes came on the market at prices that non-wealthy people could afford, and brides were eager to add these new hues to their wedding party. By the 1940s, white was traditionally reserved for the bride, and most bridesmaids were wearing other colors.

By the Numbers

Did you know?

White wedding dresses used to represent wealth, not purity.

Even before the trend went mainstream, white and silver dresses were a common choice among wealthy brides in the 18th century, but the colors had nothing to do with purity and everything to do with extravagance. Light-colored dresses were costly and impossible to keep clean, so wearing one signaled money and status. As white dresses became affordable to more brides, the association with purity was retroactively applied by women’s magazines. In 1849, an article in Godey’s Lady’s Book claimed that white dresses were “an emblem of the purity and innocence of girlhood, and the unsullied heart she now yields to the chosen one.”