The wedding dress has come a long way. Let’s go back into time. Traditionally the wedding dress is white. It depicts the perceived purity of the bride. The assumption is that the bride is a virgin and would only stain her clothes for the first time in bed of her husband.

The white wedding gown could be traced back to 1406. But it was not until the 1840 wedding of England’s Queen Victoria to her cousin Prince Albert that the white wedding gown became popular. Queen Victoria’s stunning white wedding gown, dripping with orange blossoms, inspired thousands of potential brides to wear white when they wedded.

Prior to that, most weddings in the early centuries were more of business agreements or to concretize alliances between rich families/groups with common interests, other than joining two people in love. Often rich families or business tycoons will make their children marry each other to keep their family wealth within a particular circle, or as a condition for an expected business agreement or support. In such circumstance, the wedding gown worn by the bride was chosen to represent the wealth, nobility, and high social status or the bride’s family.

Some used red dresses and other darker colours for their weddings. And blue was very popular in those days because it was viewed as representing purity, piety and having a connection to the Virgin Mary. There was a reason blue represented purity then; bleaching technology was not advanced enough to turn cloths into pure white. So they often settled for blue as pure. But after the Queen Victoria white wedding, the rich and elite developed the interest in using white for weddings, no matter how much it cost to bleach cloth to while.    

Culture

But much later, the choice of colours began to have cultural rather than status considerations. The culture of the bride determines the colour worn for the wedding. African brides, for instance, wear gowns/dresses far from the typical white gown found in many Western weddings.

In Ghana, for instance, a traditional African bride wears a woven cloth called “kente” that represents her roots and the history of her native land. Some also wearing textiles prints sown into beautiful clothes known as “Kaba and Silt” or two pieces of cloth tied from the chest and wrapped around the body, styled with beads and traditional sandals known as “ahenema” to go with it.

Modern fashion

Until recently, the wedding dress was designed to depict the perceive purity and piety of the bride. It was designed to hide the curves of the bride, which was reserved for only the husband to uncover in the privacy of their room on the wedding night. Indeed the wedding veil, which usually covered the bride’s face, also depicted the perception that the bride is a virgin and no man has seen her nakedness.

So the symbolic unveiling of the bride by the groom means the groom is the only one who has the mandate to see the nakedness of the bride.

But in recent times, wedding dresses are being designed with features that expose so many parts of the bride meant to have been hidden on a wedding day. It used to be just the arms and neck of the bride that were exposed on the wedding day, but now, brides seem to be trying hard to outdo each other by exposing very vital parts of their bodies on the wedding day. Some designs expose the chest, bare back, and even the breast. And in more recent times, short gowns even expose the thighs of brides.

This new trend has become such a worry for not only the pastors, who officiate the weddings, but also for guests who attend the wedding ceremonies. There is so much talk about it in the mainstream media and on social media. But some brides give various reasons for preferring ‘skimpy’ wedding dresses to the traditional long gowns. Some say they prefer to be daring, others say just love the attention. Some women say skimpy dresses are just normal for them so they see no reason to wear something different on their wedding day. Others say they just need to be in vogue, and there is another group of ladies who say they prefer provocative wedding dresses because they want to outdo others.

The grooms

So what do men say about letting their brides wear a provocative wedding dress? Some say for them anything and everything goes, but others say they will not stand for that at all. Indeed some insisted on choosing the gown together with their brides. The extreme moralists say they will call off the wedding if the bride shows up in something disgraceful.

What the guests think

Most guests at weddings, particularly the ladies, go to see the wedding gown, the decoration, the cake and the food served. When you sit among especially the older women, then you will hear what they really think of the dress the bride is wearing. I sat behind the family of the groom at a wedding one time; the woman I sat behind was the aunty of the groom. She was introduced as a queen-mother. She said very damning things about the bride and her mother. I heard her say “this young lady does she have home training - where is her mother - how can she watch her daughter to wear such a dress that exposes her nakedness - and the groom too, is he in his right senses to marry such a lady?” Then another woman jumped in and said, “na se brima no saa na ope-a, emaa oni womu anate nyaa no saa na wo mu dressi”, to wit “that is what the groom likes, because all the women he has dated dress provocatively.”

There was also an incident where an old lady walked to a bride who was taking photographs and pulled up her dress to cover her exposed breast. While she did so she said “meni noo” to wit “what at all is that”. This act generated a lot of mixed reaction; some said the bride should be ashamed of herself, while others said the old lady was a witch. Hmm, is she really a witch? I don’t know. But I was glad she did that.

Pastors

Most churches do not have specific rules on wedding gowns, whether it should be long sleeves, short sleeves, bare back, or what? But some pastors are calling for a specific dress code for weddings as many brides walking down the aisle have ended up embossing themselves in their dress. They often look half naked in skimpy but very expensive gowns. The price is usually from GHC1,000 upwards. If you get a local seamstress to sew for you, you get it between GHC300 and GHC500.

But some pastors have another special concern. They complain that the provocative dresses make them uncomfortable as pastors when they are officiating the wedding. According to them, they are subjected to seeing way more than they should see on the bride, and that is worrying, particularly for the male pastors. In my church, the pastor’s wife assists the bride in choosing the wedding dress to ensure it is not provocative.

Lead Pastor of Cedar Mountain Church Rev. Dr. Steve Wengham thinks it is important for churches to have rules to govern new couples on what kind of wedding gown to choose. He believes that will help to prevent trapping the officiating minister is the temptation of having to ensure viewing exposed sensitive parts of the bride. The pastor is therefore suggesting that the requirement be put in writing, as part of other requirement, given to the couple before their wedding. And they must agree to the rules by appending their signatures.

Dr. Wengham believes pastors have a duty to openly rebuke brides who break the rules and wear provocative gowns right at the wedding, to serve as a deterrent to others.  “It is important for the pastor to say that the church believes in decent dresses and the brides are aware”. This he says will go a long way to shame the bride of the day and be a warning to others.

The Radio Pastor of the Church of Pentecost, Rev. Daniel Nii Tetteh Tackie has proposed the use of decent traditional wear for weddings instead of the recent immodest dresses that some brides wear. He says, if brides wear simple modest African wear, it will cut down cost and prevent the use of sleeveless gowns, low-cut dresses, halter necks, tubes, high slits and transparent gowns and all sort of immodest gowns for their weddings.

But there is still some amount of concern with the way some women even cut the African print (the kaba and slit). Dr. Wengham for instance, noted that the way some women cut the kaba to expose their backs and cleavage, and cut the slit to expose their thighs is equally worrying.

Marriage Counsellor, Pastor Aaron Kevin-Annan, shares an experience of a bride whose tight-sleeveless low-cut gown got torn while she was being helped to kneel down for prayers. Ei, just imagine that sight. What a disgrace. 

The boy

A friend told me of how little boy pointed to the exposed breast of a bride one time. The bride was moving from table to table at her wedding reception to thank the guest. She got to the table where the boy was sitting with his dad. She bent over to give the boy some candies and the boy saw her exposed breast. He tapped his dad, pointed to the brides and said “nunu”. Apparently that is what he says when he wants breast milk.

Designers

Some cloth designers and bridal shop owners are also worried about the kind of wedding dresses brides of today choose. The CEO of Ruby’s Bridals, Ruby Anomah said they often try to sew wedding dresses to depict the sanctity of the occasion. But some brides insist on particular styles of dresses, even when the style does not fit them.

The irony is that the bridal shops import the provocative wedding dresses, which presupposes they expect people to go buy them. Some local dressmakers also make provocative wedding dresses. Estella Opoku is a seamstress who specializes in bridal wears, and she shares the same sentiments as Ruby.

 So the onus now lies on the clothes designers and bridal shop to stop importing and sewing the provocative wedding dresses. They must be bold to tell prospective brides that provocative wedding dresses are a no-no. That, more than anything else, will go a long way to keep wedding sacred and decent, as they are meant to be – a divine ordinance.