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| Gonzalo Villota/jvillota.com |
For her April wedding in Delray Beach, Fla., Whitney Ranson wore this traditional sleeveless gown, which was designed by Monique Lhuillier.
By TATIANA BONCOMPAGNI
Published: August 20, 2010
SARAH LANDMAN wore an elaborate silk satin and tulle gown on June 12, befitting her traditional wedding to David Schwarz. But by the time a band started playing for their 350 guests on the grounds of the Philadelphia Navy Yard, Ms. Landman had ditched her Oscar de la Renta for a custom-made white cocktail frock embellished with sequins and ostrich feathers.
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| Gonzalo Villota/jvillota.com |
At night’s end, Ms. Ranson switched to a short strapless dress from H & M before leaving with her husband, Alexander Ranson. Some brides change dresses earlier.
“I wanted to change into something I could jump around in,” said Ms. Landman, 27, a buyer for the designer Tory Burch.
Despite the sagging economy, more brides — and not just celebrities — are buying and wearing two dresses for their wedding day. Harriette Rose Katz, a wedding planner in New York, said the practice has become practically ubiquitous among her clientele. Jung Lee of Fête, an event planning company, estimated that about 70 percent of the brides she sees are changing into a second dress, a figure that’s been on the rise for the last three years.
In other parts of the world, the multi-dress wedding day is nothing new.
“It’s very common in Asia, between India, China and Korea, where there are actually many dress changes, not just one,” Ms. Lee said. “It’s been going on for hundreds of years.”
According to Ms. Lee, brides in this country — including Carrie Underwood, Alicia Keys and Mena Suvari, who all wore two dresses at their weddings this summer — usually make the switch during the reception. They might change after cocktails and before cake-cutting or during a band-to-DJ transition (which is when Chelsea Clinton is said to have donned her second Vera Wang dress, a Grecian-inspired number, during her marriage to Marc Mezvinsky).
Why two dresses? Monique Lhuillier, a bridal designer, traces the trend in this country back 10 years, to when wedding dresses started becoming bigger and heavier, necessitating a second dress, usually a white, ivory or silver frock with a shorter hemline or slinkier silhouette.
“Brides who buy second dresses are usually women who want it all,” said Elizabeth Hui, a buyer for Bergdorf Goodman. “The traditional over-the-top princess gown for the wedding ceremony, and afterwards, for the reception, a fun, flirty party dress that is more comfortable.”
Amsale, the company that made Ms. Keys’s second dress, started a capsule collection of little white dresses, priced from $900 to $1,200, in 2008, while Badgley Mischka started selling dresses with detachable ball skirts, including a $3,950 gown from its Mark + James line.
In response to customer demand, Ms. Lhuillier, who designed two dresses for Ms. Underwood, has started putting more short dresses in her salons, and Michelle Smith, the designer of the Milly line, has partnered with Nordstrom to produce a line of short white dresses.
“Almost all the designers are now carrying a second-dress option,” said Karina Timmel, the executive editor of Get Married magazine, which featured a “Short and Sweet” fashion spread in this summer’s issue.
And for some brides, like Julia Hawkins, it’s not about one big dress and one small one, but two full-on fairy tale confections. For her wedding last September, Ms. Hawkins, fashion director for Women’s Wear Daily, bought a traditional cap-sleeve Monique Lhuillier dress and cathedral-length veil to walk the aisle of Trinity Wall Street in New York. She also bought a Carolina Herrera strapless gown cut from reverse embroidered lace for the dinner reception at Cipriani Wall Street. “It was just real hard to decide,” Ms. Hawkins said.
As Stacey Bendet, the Alice + Olivia designer who made two custom gowns for Ms. Suvari’s wedding, said, “From a fashion perspective there’s nothing like making a second entrance.”
Or a memorable exit. Whitney Ranson, 27, a merchandise planner, chose a sleeveless dress by Ms. Lhuillier for her April wedding at a country club in Delray Beach, Fla. But at the end of the night she changed into a short strapless cream dress, which she bought at H&M for $40.
“I wanted to switch it up for the exit,” said Ms. Ranson, who made her getaway in a golf cart as guests held sparklers overhead.
Of course, not everyone is a fan of the trend. Randy Fenoli, the fashion director of Kleinfeld Bridal in New York and the host of “Say Yes to the Dress,” a reality show on TLC, said he recently talked a bride from Houston out of buying three dresses, one of which cost $8,000.
“In my personal opinion you should get one really great dress,” he said. “Find a dress, the ultimate dress, because there’s always going to be one dress you like more than the others. It’s like getting married. There’s only one guy.”
It is advice Fiona Hagist de Sada, 28, probably wishes she had heard before her wedding three years ago in Monterrey, Mexico. She wore a lace and organza gown appropriate for the traditional ceremony (with 632 guests) at the private chapel on the estate her husband’s family owns. In time for dinner and dancing, however, Ms. Hagist de Sada abandoned the full-skirted Vera Wang in favor of a silver-beaded chiffon dress from the designer Reem Acra.
“I didn’t want to deal with having to tie up the train,” Ms. Hagist de Sada said.
But now?
“When I look back at the pictures, I wish I’d worn the first dress longer,” she said. “I’ll never get to wear it again. It was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.”
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