Wedding Dresses for the Style Essences?
Your wedding can be the happiest day of your life, maybe especially if you’re a Romantic Ethereal—you’re marrying the person of your dreams, and you finally get to dress based on your essences without worrying about looking too formal:
Here’s an exploration of the style essences in wedding dresses (spoiler: a lot of Romantic and Ethereal), plus thoughts on how to use wedding attire as inspiration for your real-life wardrobe.
Romantic Ethereal dresses
An extraordinary yet fairly standard wedding dress, with a fitted Romantic silhouette transitioning into a dreamy Ethereal train.
The exquisite detail—profuse lace all over the bodice and hem—is also a hallmark of both essences.
Even if you have a highly Romantic Ethereal face, you probably don’t want to spend your everyday life traipsing around in a dress like this.
But you might find that maxi dresses, especially with sexy necklines and flowy skirts, are one of your most flattering styles.
Another Romantic Ethereal gown, again with a fitted bodice and flowing skirt.
Tulle can sometimes read as Ingenue, but here it creates an elongated, mermaid-like Ethereal shape.
If you swap the tulle for lightweight cotton, the maxi mermaid skirt can be a great Ethereal closet basic.
Romantic Ethereal Dramatic dresses
Not all wedding dresses boast intricate detail. This one has Ethereal flow in the sleeves and skirt, with a high Romantic slit (plus bejeweled Romantic heels).
But the fabric’s stark minimalism, combined with the angular plunge neckline, introduces Dramatic.
Not exactly a real-life-friendly gown, but it illustrates how a plunging and angular neckline is an easy way to add Dramatic to any outfit.
Again we have the wedding dress formula that manages to never be boring: plunging Romantic neckline, flowy Ethereal skirt.
And again the minimalism (plus the miles-long train) adds Dramatic.
Dramatic and Classic can be difficult to distinguish, because they both feel dignified and minimalist.
With Dramatic, you want a vibe that feels extreme and intense. With Classic, you want understatement and timelessness:
Romantic Ethereal Classic dress
As above, we have a deep, curvy Romantic neckline (plus sheer Ethereal overlay) and long, gently draped Ethereal skirt.
But compared to the dresses so far, this one exudes greater Classic conventionality, especially with the skirt’s moderate flare.
Here’s what happens when you exaggerate that flare:
Romantic Ethereal Ingenue dress
If you’re an Ingenue, you want to search for a circle, bell, or funnel shape in skirts, and in your sleeves and tops, too.
Adding this shape to a wedding dress creates an Ingenue princess-like feel, with some Ethereal from the extra-long lace train.
If you chop off the circle skirt, you’re left with a highly Romantic silhouette.
More Ingenue blend dresses
And if you supersize the Ingenue circle skirt, it acquires an avant-garde Dramatic vibe, plus Ethereal with the elongated flow and profuse delicate lace.
Now we’re back to a much more conventional silhouette, with Classic minimalism and a long, flowy Ethereal skirt.
The Ingenue comes from the covered short-sleeve neckline, which projects a sweet, demure feel.
Here’s what happens when we want a more playful feel:
Romantic Ethereal Gamine dresses
Gamine’s vibe is quirky, exuberant, and irreverent—meaning that Gamines get some of the funnest fashion options, but that those options might generally be more associated with the after-party than the actual wedding ceremony.
Still, this is a gorgeous Romantic Ethereal Gamine gown—Romantic with the curving sexy neckline, Ethereal with the narrow flowing skirt, and Gamine because of the sequined bodice.
If you’re an Ethereal Gamine, sequins can be a staple fabric for you—they reflect light in a diffuse Ethereal way, and their evident playfulness and pizazz embodies Gamine.
Another option for a Gamine dress: go with an iconic Gamine high-neck silhouette. The profuse detail is Ethereal, with a conventional sexiness that adds Romantic. But the neckline is very Gamine, especially because it appears constructed from a different material than the rest of the top.
When you mix and match as a Gamine, you want to emphasize the “mix” aspect, pairing textures, colors, and prints that we don’t ordinarily expect to see together.
Ethereal Natural Classic dress
Your wedding day is (arguably) the day when you’re supposed to look your most glamorous, at least according to cultural norms.
Natural is the most casual and carefree essence—can it actually work in a wedding dress?
Yes! But because the typical wedding dress is so defined by glamor and general dressed-up-ness, you might have to rely on some unique choices to introduce Natural.
This dress appears to use a knit material to create a wide yet draped silhouette, cleverly adding a carefree Natural vibe. Wide, roomy sweaters are a Natural wardrobe staple.
As unique as the dress is, there’s still Ethereal flow and Classic refinement and polish.
What are the most common style essences in wedding dresses?
We might expect that a day devoted to love would primarily feature Romantic-friendly attire.
But intriguingly, it’s the Ethereal essence that seems ubiquitous in wedding dresses.
It’s hard to find a wedding dress, at least in modern American culture, without a lot of dreamy Ethereal.
This might reflect how we conceptualize weddings: the dream day, the dream partner, the fantasy wedding.
Plus, Ethereality can convey the notion of the bride as angelic and innocent. Not everyone likes or agrees with that notion, but it is an idea that can be conjured by wearing a long, white, delicate gown.
Romantic is also well-represented in bridal attire, which isn’t too shocking, since “romance” is kind of a (hopefully) important part of marriage.
A Romantic Ethereal affair
And it’s not just wedding dresses. It’s also veils, large floral bouquets, and glamorous hair and makeup—these elements tend to flatter Ethereal and Romantic:
Bridesmaids dresses often have a lot of Ethereal and Romantic, too:
A conventional wedding aesthetic feels designed to be both dreamy and passionate, embodying the Ethereal and Romantic types.
The link between Ethereal and Romantic
Ethereal and Romantic are in many ways highly related.
They’re both flattered by medium-to-large curving shapes, soft and shiny textures, and high detail.
They also both have a strong relationship to the concept of “fantasy”—Ethereal because of its otherworldliness, and Romantic because love and romance can be so much associated with imagining idealistic scenarios.
And since the concept of “fantasy” has a strong relationship to the concept of “romance,” you can argue that the Ethereal essence actually has a strong relationship to the concept of romance, too.
Is Ethereal “passionless?”
Ethereal beauty is sometimes characterized as “passionless,” in contrast to the intense passion of the Romantic essence.
And it’s true that Romantic often reads as more conventionally passionate and sensual.
But I’d also strongly question the idea that Ethereality feels “passionless.”
Ethereal beauty feels dreamy and fantasy-esque, and dreams and fantasies are often associated with fierce passion—with hope for something we desperately want—even with an intensely idealistic, fervent desire.
Ethereal beauty does tend to feel gentle and serene. But that doesn’t mean that it can’t be passionate in its own tranquil way.
What other essences are in wedding dresses?
Classic and Dramatic elements are easy to find in wedding dresses, but they don’t tend to be extremely prominent.
Ingenue elements are also easy to find, and sometimes wedding dresses can be primarily Ingenue. But Ingenue wedding gowns still tend to have Ethereal and sometimes other essences, too.
Highly Ingenue dresses can have a demure vibe, further emphasizing the gentle, angelic quality that’s already present in the typical long white gown.
Natural and Gamine in wedding dresses
As we could probably predict, the iconically casual Natural and Gamine essences aren’t extremely well-represented in stereotypical bridal wear.
You can definitely get some Natural or Gamine into a wedding dress by adding certain silhouettes or fabrics. And depending on the setting, you might choose a much more bohemian, Natural look—for instance, a wedding on the beach.
But overall, Natural and Gamine seem to the be the least frequent essences in the typical Western wedding gown.
In mainstream American fashion, the opposite is true: jeans, Tees, hoodies, oversized sweaters, sneakers, slides—modern fashion is in love with the Natural Gamine aesthetic.
One reason for this: the modern aesthetic can be very much about looking “cool,” and the concept of looking cool is related to the idea of looking like you didn’t try too hard.
In contrast, on your wedding day, it’s pretty acceptable to kind of look like you put in some effort.
And of course neither aesthetic—casual or elaborate—is superior. There’s so much to love about both. And there’s so much intriguing, inventive beauty that emerges when you blend aspects of more laidback and high-maintenance style. If you have a style type that blends these essences, like Romantic Ethereal Natural or Ethereal Natural Gamine, you get to play around with this gorgeous juxtaposition.
How Naturals and Gamines do a wedding aesthetic
Weddings with a more bohemian or beachy aesthetic can have many more options with Natural silhouettes, fabrics, and overall vibes. And we already explored how high necklines and sequins can be Gamine, but we can envision other options, too, like playful angular cutouts in a dress or even lace that has small geometrics instead of traditional curving shapes.
For this post, I used the (conventional) wedding dress images that were most readily available to me, but future posts may delve into more unique dresses.
Natural and Gamine hair and makeup
Another way to express your essences is of course through hair and makeup. Natural and Gamine hair and makeup options may not be the most stereotypically bridal, but long beachy layers, maybe even interwoven with wild flowers, could be a gorgeous Natural wedding look.
And there’s no rule that says you need long hair on your wedding day, so Gamines could go with cool, short, piecey layers or styled yet playful bangs.
Naturals can also wear a fair amount of bronzer and earth-toned makeup, while Gamines are great in vibrant lips and liquid-liner-emphasized eyes. And a big benefit of Gamine makeup is that, with its highly-pigmented colors and matte applications, it tends to photograph well.
This will likely be a topic for future posts, but a challenge for people who prefer to wear softer makeup (shimmery eyeshadow, pale glossy lips) is that matte, bold makeup applications might tend to photograph more true to life, especially from a distance.
Photography tangent
This also partly explains the bold brows craze: in our highly digital age, lighter, thinner, more delicate brows, while beautiful, might not show up as well (or at all) under the camera’s bright lights.
In contrast, bold brows—which are also beautiful, though not inherently superior to other brow styles—do tend to photograph quite well and true to life.
In our extremely digital culture, a lot of modern makeup and fashion trends seem to reflect what photographs well, rather than what’s most inherently beautiful (given the inevitable subjectivity of beauty).
This is also true of other facial feature trends, like having small noses or sharp bone structure. These features can photograph more true to life, but they aren’t inherently more beautiful.
Summary
Modern wedding dresses often have elaborate, glamorous, angelic, and dreamy vibes—highly Romantic and Ethereal
Wedding dresses can also be highly Ingenue, though will often still have Ethereal
Dramatic and Classic elements are also easy to find but don’t tend to be a dress’s strongest essences
Natural and Gamine don’t appear well-represented in traditional wedding wear, though less conventional dresses may have a good bit of these essences, and there are still ways to express these essences, especially with hair and makeup
Many modern beauty trends seem largely based on what photographs most easily or true to life, rather than what is most inherently beautiful
