Forget a subtle cream number, for the most fashionable brides it's all about the big dress.
If 2022 is the year of the extreme wedding, it is also the year of the extreme dress. Gowns are anything but shy and retiring, with "standing out from the crowd" now a crucial factor for post-pandemic brides who are throwing themselves into large dos. This means big and bouncy — think multiple layers of tulle and a scale that would make even the most precocious Disney princess proud. But this isn't the return of the meringue.
Today's big dress energy has an ease to it, with contemporary designers such as Molly Goddard and Simone Rocha emerging as the cool girl's choice for pumping up the volume. Think less about mutton shoulders and the 20ft-plus trains worn by Princess Diana and Céline Dion (fun fact: the My Heart Will Go On singer teamed her wedding gown with a Swarovski crystal-embellished tiara that weighed a migraine-inducing 3kg) and more about layers of tulle perfect for spinning around in on a dancefloor.
"There's something so invigorating and comforting about your dress literally taking up space," says Goddard, who launched her bridal range in 2020. "It's not a wedding if your dress doesn't fill up the car and cushion you when you fall on the dancefloor."
She's not the only one to think so. The fashion search engine Lyst reports that as big weddings make a comeback, princess dresses are emerging as a lead trend, with "ballgown" and "big tulle dress" the most searched-for terms alongside "wedding dress". The little-publicised nuptials (ahem!) of a certain Beckham offspring can only have served to add fuel to these flames, with Nicola Peltz and her Valentino floor-filler.