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Dear All, I am extremely grateful and impressed - though not surprised - by the quality and quantity of responses to my posting; this is a wonderful list. As so many people seem to be interested in the issue, I'm forwarding another response I received privately. Shannon, I would like to cite your message in a footnote, if I may? Margery Kempe was actually my starting point for the query; I think her white clothes are less clearly readable than is sometimes assumed, as her comments about them make it clear that it wasn't at all usual for "chast wemen" of any description to wear white. She records various reactions to them, and only the one which specifies virginity. They're often said by critics to signify virginity or brideship; but the problem is that as far as I am aware, and this is what I was trying to check, there is very little evidence for virgins or brides actually wearing white. Some orders of nuns do, of course, but this still leaves Margery looking distincly anomalous. There is a possible connection with nuns and their veiling ceremonies; some veiling ceremonies specify white for the part of the ceremony when the nun is in between secular and sacred dress. It's also been pointed out to me that queens might wear white for coronations - even if they'd been married for years, so this isn't a virginity issue, specifically. Overall, white seems to be so heavily symbolic and so rarely worn outside of ritual moments, that it signifies "odd" before it signifies "virgin" or "bride." Sorry to take up more of your time with this, but enough people seemed to be interested to justify explaining why I was asking - and if anyone else has more examples, I'd be glad to hear about them. Thanks to all responders, Sarah Forwarded Message: From: Robin Netherton <[log in to unmask]> Date: Mon, 7 Jun 1999 10:31:42 -0400 (EDT) Subject: Re: White Weddings (fwd) To: Sarah Salih <[log in to unmask]> Sarah, A friend of mine passed me your query about white weddings. I do research in medieval costume. Although there's almost certainly evidence somewhere for someone wearing white for a wedding at some point in the Middle Ages, I haven't found it yet. On the other hand, I've seen many, many pictures showing marriages of nobility, and I cannot recall even one in which the bride wore white. So, while I can't say it was *never* done, ever, I can certainly state without reservation that it wasn't the norm, at least not in England, France, Flanders, and probably the rest of Western Europe. There is only one reference even casually connected that I can think of: The maiden in "Pearl" is, I think, clothed all in white, and she is shown at the end to be a bride of Christ. However, she is a dream-vision of a dead child, and not exactly representative of normal women. Also, if memory serves me, the brief description of her dress is unconnected to the passages about her status as a bride. The white color almost certainly has other significance, not least it being the color of pearl. Today's white wedding tradition is, I think, 18th century in origin, but even then it took some time to permeate from the upper classes to the rest of society. In America, colored wedding dresses were common enough to be considered unremarkable throughout the 19th century. The traditions of the last few hundred years have been fairly well documented in the costume literature, based on descriptions, fashion magazines, etc. (There's even a book on historic costume titled something like "Costume for Births, Marriages, and Deaths" that you can find in many libraries). That doesn't eliminate the possibility that white might have been used medievally and then fallen out of fashion, but I find that highly doubtful. If you think this would be useful to your list, feel free to repost it there. --Robin Netherton %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%