There is perhaps nothing more uncomfortable than to be held captive in an audience during an immodest display of wedding party garments that can only be described as underwear. The Bible commands women to dress modestly, and it is really simple to do so. These days, all you have to do is have a garment with sleeves, a bodice that has a neckline (at least near the neck), no holes or gaps, and nothing embarrassingly tight.
The bride's attendants should also be modest. Dresses with straps, and dresses without sleeves, are not modest. Dresses that reveal cleavage to everyone, are not modest, nor are dresses that cling so tightly to the bustline or hips that they leave nothing secret.
Church members here have established modesty policies for weddings in their congregation. They claim that anyone who had a wedding in their church building, would have to be modest. No cleavage, and no bare looking clothing; nothing above the knee, and no strapless. I thought this was fair. These church members were just trying to put some limits on the immodesty that we are faced with at weddings. I remember one wedding I attended where I was unprepared for the amount of immodesty that was displayed. I had no warning, and neither did anyone else. There were audible gasps from some people in the audience, and then some embarrassment, as people, even men, lowered their heads and looked at the floor as the bridesmades in their short, skin tight dresses walked past.
These pictures and paintings show a variety of dresses worn for weddings in past eras, proof that modesty can be maintained. I wonder if we could change the immodesty trend by refusing to give a gift or attend any weddings where the bride and the bridesmaids were dressing immodestly. This would require some sluething beforehand, but it might be effective enough to forewarn them, so that they could reconsider wearing immodest clothing at a wedding. Other than that, the only way to prevent immodest dressing is to train your daughters not to wear immodest clothing any other time, and they will not want to wear a skimpy, trendy wedding dress in public.
I recently enjoyed looking at the photographs of the most modest and yet beautiful wedding I have ever seen. The clothes were perfection, hand sewn by the women on both sides of the family. The bride's dress had a modest neckline, elbow length sleeves with a shaped ruffle (longer in the back part) and a full skirt. The bridesmaids wore dresses with lace vests attached, all modest and all lovely.
When you dress modestly, you do not have to keep tugging at everything. Immodest clothes are not good for you. They do not protect you, which is one function of clothing. Too many weddings look like something other than a wedding. We all need to come up with ideas to thwart the designers attempt to put every bride in a dress that barely covers her. These dresses often cost hundreds of dollars and have very little fabric on them. That is not a very good deal. We must all stop following the pied pipers of fashion.
Clothing at weddings should indicate the seriousness and holiness of the event, not the sexiness of the women. I have observed over the years so many immodest weddings, and found that more than half of these marriages do not last two years. If a bride is serious about life and has any maturity, she will see to it that her wedding is modest, and that she covers more than she reveals. We live in an era where everyone shows off their bareness, and people have forgotten that the flesh is private. Weddings should be treated as something so sacred that only those who are dressing in the proper, modest garments, should attend.
(Titles and links to pictures coming later)
These Hawaiian dress patterns are great for wedding dresses: Nos 205, 101, 001 in particular. Click on for a larger view.
Good role models for modest wedding attire in church and civil ceremonies are the members of the European Royalty. Do a web search of the young royals in eastern and western countries and look at the up to date wedding attire that the women are wearing. No matter what you may think of royalty, the young women have, for decades, led the world in modest, beautiful wedding attire.
