A friend of mine got married in a black dress. The ceremony was casual so the dress was too. It was awful in my opinion - if there’d been something special about the design the black might have worked.
Her new mother-in-law did a painting of my friend in her black dress - it was spooky and I don’t think the MIL meant it to be.
BTW, my friend is a designer so she doesn’t follow ‘the rules’ which is great when it works but this time it just didn’t work.
I agree. To be married in black…!! not a Goth I presume??
Went to a wedding last week-end, Saturday… and Whoah! One of the bridesmaids wore a black dress… Went a little bit against the grain, given the bride was in white, and the bridesmaids wore either white or pastel shades. But respect!!
In fact I asked her where had she got her dress and she confessed it was a party dress, and not bought specially for this wedding. Ingtrigued, i asked more questions and tracked it dowm to be an FC “Meadow Dress” (which I hadn’t come across before).
Looked it up: http://www.frenchconnection.com/category/Woman+Collections+Dresses/Dresses.htm and decided that I’m going to get one for my lady.. probably in red… 
The black one could also be ujsed at funerals.. or is that a bit morbid? Ha Ha!
I wanted to get married in blue velvet but things didn’t pan out.
The woman my uncle married (a widow) wore a teal dress.
My husband was in the Air Force, and overseas at the time. He flew back to the States and proposed. We’d had an understanding for a couple of years, and he’d had enough of single life. So. We decided to get married ASAP. We had to get the license and the blood test and wait for three days. My mother was frantic, because while she’d always wanted me to get married, she hadn’t expected to get a wedding together in three days. There was no time to really shop for a wedding dress, and all the accompaniments. We bought a new dress and shoes. I got married in a street length (mid thigh length at the time) dress, which was steel blue. I didn’t have a veil, or a fancy hairdo, or even much makeup. Bill wore his AF dress blues, and I think a couple of the guests wore blue jeans. The whole ceremony took place at my parents’ house.
We celebrated our 34th anniversary last month.
Can I briefly hijack to mention how thrilled I am to see this traditional phrase revived to describe a couple’s “pre-engaged” or “vaguely planning to marry someday but haven’t got round to the official proposal-and-ring stage yet” status?
I think “having an understanding” is a much more elegant and expressive term than more recent equivalents like “pre-engaged” or “engaged to become engaged”, etc. Good for you and many congratulations on your anniversary!
I don’t think that the word “pre-engaged” was even around back then. We’d broken up and gotten back together a time or two, and we had agreed that while he was in the Air Force and I was in college, that we’d date other people, and see what we wanted to do after his term was up and I’d graduated. As it turned out, though, neither of us wanted to wait that long. Looking back, we should have waited, but eh, it worked out, more or less.
I wouldn’t be caught dead in a white wedding dress. 
In Hinduism as it is in the West, white is the color of innocence/purity, which means NFW would we be wearing it at our wedding! We wear red or pink, the colors of passion and lust. I think it shows a fundamental dichotomy in the two cultures: Western (read: Christian) cultures believe in innocence in a marriage, so you come to the marriage pure. So do we, except we fully believe you need to stop being innocent, right away. We even have lewd songs about the wedding night:
Rukmini, Rukmini
What happened after the wedding?
Who won and who lost?
Go and peek in the window and tell me for sure
…
He must have touched her with one finger making her tremble
The Gods of Lust began to dance
Her whole body bloomed; lightning struck
Her bindi flashed, her bracelets jingled,
When two bodies meet youth itself blooms
Every happiness is received from earth and sky
We actually wear white for our funerals to represent the purity of the souls.
I admit, I don’t altogether like a lot of the current Western wedding dresses. Off the shoulders? Revealing all that cleavage? Just doesn’t seem right in front of God and your family, and I don’t even believe in God…I hope taxicab doesn’t mind me bringing her up but she wore the most beautiful Western dress I’d ever seen, with full sleeves and lace all over. Goregous.
Oh, and I also like the phrase “have an understanding”.
I like watching wedding dress shows, and I wonder about the choices some girls make, too - this isn’t the time to show off your inner stripper. You really want three-quarters of your boobs hanging out in front of your grandparents and aunts and uncles and the minister and everyone? I was so glad to see Kate Middleton’s dress, and it had sleeves and no cleavage and everything!
A friend of mine with an Indian Dad and English Mum had a small civil ceremony one day and a traditional Hindu blessing ceremony the following day. For the Hindu ceremony both of them wore traditional Indian wedding garb, so a beautiful embroidered red dress for her. They had a devil of a job sourcing his scandals as he has size 13 feet and they just didn’t make them that big. For the civil ceremony her dress was in a non traditional Western style – ie as far from a meringue as you could get but still a definite wedding dress – made by the same dressmaker from a cream fabric sourced from India. She looked fantastic in both.