The story of how the bride got her candy-floss wedding look is as joyful as the dress itself. There was only one style of matelassé silk organza dress left in the UK and Rhodes had to track it down. An alert came from Dover Street Market, to say that the store had received a new sample that she would be interested in. ” It was Valentine’s Day 2020.
Anna’s wedding to Fred Scott at Hauser & Wirth in Bruton was postponed twice, but her confidence in the dress never wavered. On the day, Anna felt whimsical in her Cecilie Bahnsen cotton candy and accessorized with ice white accessories to up the bridal factor. A pair of Jacquemus Manosque sandals with a sculptured ceramic bon bon heel, an AM Faulkner polka dot veil and an Antonia lobster bag added to the romance, as did her angelic white flower girl dresses topped with flower crowns pink – the back of its color scheme. “To be honest, I never wanted to take off the dress,” she says after reflection.
For rebel bride Harriet Hall, who led the wedding planning at the height of the lockdown, the dress came before the engagement ring. “I want to get married in this,” she texted her friend after laying eyes on the gorgeous pink tulle party that glided down Molly Goddard’s Fall/Winter 2019 runway. Marriage was somewhere on the horizon, but Hall had struggled to see herself as a bride… until that flash of bright tulle melted her heart.
“I’ve always felt that I missed the elegant indifference that most women seem to have naturally in themselves, and which comes out on their wedding day as they transform into ivory swans,” explains Harriet. “This was a dress so in-your-face that it dismissed any suggestion of virginal purity, female subjugation or insensitivity that white dresses can symbolize. It was so loud, it was subversive.” Accessorized with a royal pearl headband and a Simone Rocha clutch bag, the final look, Hall says, is how she imagined Queen Elizabeth I might have dressed if she were a millennial.
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Her pandemic bride husband Charlier Porter similarly opted for her Carolina Herrera polka-dot dress, which she dropped off at the Matchesfashion.com sale, because it felt nice against a gloomy news cycle. On the eve of her small wedding in London, in compliance with Covid-19 restrictions, Porter felt out of sorts and couldn’t put her finger on why. As soon as she put on her happy wedding dress, she “felt at home.”
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Four different weddings, one common story. These women chose their pink wedding dresses because they did not conform to the conventional parameters of wedding dresses. “Every time I tried on something more formal for a bride, it felt like I was playing dress-up,” shares Rhodes. “I just wanted to feel authentically me instead of some version of the archetypal ‘bride’ that I didn’t identify with.”
This is not a new thing. Fellow alternative bride Jamaica Walden escaped to California wine country last summer and wore Christopher John Rogers’ 004 Strawberry dress as a tribute to her mother, who wore vivid pink on her wedding day years ago. Jamaican husband Barry Mottier’s jaw dropped when he saw his partner pull off a high-fashion moment that put the word ‘bride’ on her own terms – exactly as it should be on a day that’s all about two people who are committed to each other, just the way they are.