Hi, Rosa!

Church law does not have any regulations on the color of wedding dresses, because customs vary from place to place.

If I may give a personal opinion, the priests I know never seem to be bothered about the color of wedding dresses. Occasionally they may be sad to see a bride wear a dress that is not in good taste: for example, bareback dresses or other very revealing styles. These are not so beautiful for a church service. I imagine that your ivory dress with black lace will be quite impressive.

Congratulations on your upcoming wedding!

— Richard Chonak for AskACatholic.com

Hi, Rosa —

While I respect my colleagues opinion, It's my understanding that the reasoning behind a white wedding dress has to do with the ideal purity of the bride before her marriage.

Nevertheless, as Richard said, there is no Church law that I know of that regulates the color of a wedding dress.

Mike

Hi Rosa,

I think it's sufficient to say that there is no official Catholic position on the subject, and the preference among brides varies from culture to culture for various reasons.

Eric

Rosa,

You may wear any sort of dress that is tasteful and modest. The Church does not require white, though it has been the custom of society for a hundred years or more. As for color, there are certain meanings of colors depending on the society you live in.

• In Vietnam, white is for mourning.
• In India, wedding dresses are red.
• In the USA, a red dress would have connotations of a scarlet woman, for instance.

Black, and black lace, have their own connotations in the language of romance, so you might want to look at the total effect of the dress and see if you need to go with another color lace. But if you find a tasteful black-trimmed white dress, I imagine it could look very formal and very pretty.

Heavy black lace would be culturally jarring, however. Nevertheless, this is just a modern Western cultural thing, and my opinion. I know you will look beautiful — and as far as the Church is concerned, it is your inner beauty that is most important.

She doesn't care what you wear, as long as it is becoming and modest.

Hope this helps,

Mary Ann

Hi Rosa,

My understanding is that white is the color of purity and it has often been wrongly applied as indicating to the ideal of a woman entering into the matrimonial state with her physical virginity intact. This is an ideal but we are a humanity of sinners and for reasons of weakness, or even of not considering premarital sex as sinful, many enter the sacrament without intact virginity.

There is another way of looking at this: If we enter into a sacramental marriage in a state of grace (that is we have confessed our sins and received sacramental absolution) then we are indeed remade virginal. We enter into the sacrament with the intention of being faithful to one man (woman) to have and to hold, from this day forward, in sickness and in health, for richer for poorer, and in this sense we are entering as pure human beings. That freely given promise is what binds us in Matrimony and the spouse should be rejoicing in that very promise.

I don't think the color of the bride's wedding dress should take away from her joy when she is showing the world of her desire and intention to be true and faithful to her husband. In this sense, she is definitely pure and virginal, just as we are when we come out of the Confessional having received forgiveness and absolution.

• Which one of you coming out of the Confessional would like an outward sign to the world of whatever sins you have committed?
• See my point?

Don't ask a bride to display anything other than her commitment to her husband. Let you without sin cast the first stone.

Terry
England