The white wedding dress is 186 years old, not centuries: nine brides who skipped it

The white wedding dress is not a centuries-old tradition. Queen Victoria popularised it in 1840 and since then it has become so self-evident that a bride in another colour is read as a statement. A list of nine weddings shows the statement was usually far calmer than it looked.

The best known is Beatrice Borromeo's - on 25 July 2015, at the Grimaldi palace in Monaco, in pink silk with floral embroidery and a chiffon cape, by Valentino. An aristocratic wedding in a colour no protocol anticipated, and nobody objected.

Audrey Hepburn went further in 1969 - a pale pink mini dress by Hubert de Givenchy. For the time that was a double departure: the colour and the length.

Gwen Stefani married in 2002 in silk shading from white into fuchsia, with an asymmetric cut and a skirt literally spattered with paint - haute couture by John Galliano. Elizabeth Taylor chose a yellow babydoll dress with a floral headpiece in 1964. Emma Thompson went in a Renaissance direction, with a corset and a full patterned skirt. Victoria Beckham chose an asymmetric dress in purple with a floral detail.

Chloë Grace Moretz married in pale blue, designed by Nicolas Ghesquière for Louis Vuitton. Mandy Moore in pale pink tulle with ruffles, signed by Rodarte. And Lady Kitty Spencer, in July 2021 at the Villa Aldobrandini in Rome, wore organza and silk with hand-painted flowers and crystals from Dolce & Gabbana haute couture.

What connects all these weddings is not rebellion but budget. When a couture house sews the dress specifically for you, the colour becomes another item in the conversation, not a risk. A bride here who walked down the aisle in yellow would be the wedding's talking point for longer than the groom - and that is not a design question but a question of setting.

That is why lists like this get admired and rarely copied. The rule Victoria set almost two hundred years ago still stands because nobody wants to test it at their own wedding.