The length of your wedding dress train is a tradition that dates back to the Middle Ages. Back then, brides’ trains were a sign of her position in society. The longer the train, the more prominence she held with the ruling family. That’s why Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge sported a much longer train.
Wedding dress trains are the portion of the gown’s skirt that extends behind the dress, trailing along the ground behind the wearer. The train is not a necessary part of your dress. The formality of your wedding should influence your decision to have a train more than any other factor. Typically, a gown’s train length varies, based on how formal your wedding is, and may also vary based on the silhouette of the dress. Typically, wedding dresses with long trains are categorized as being formal wedding dresses, whereas wedding dresses with short trains, or no train at all, are categorized as informal wedding dresses.
An important attribute of a wedding dress is the train – or not, depending upon the bride’s personal preference. It is only one more fancy formal fashion detail you can choose to wear or not. The train helps to further differentiate your wedding gown from the bridesmaids’ dresses. Trains make a dramatic accent to your dress, especially when you can take portraits with it swirled around you on the floor.
Throughout much of the twentieth century, many brides chose to forego the bridal train, choosing gowns that reflected current fashion trends. Today, however, brides are free to wear whatever dress suits them on their special day.
Part of the Maid or Matron of Honor’s responsibility is to bustle the Bride’s train before the reception. A bustle is the best method for this, because it leaves the bride’s hands free for greeting people and dancing at the reception. Bustling a dress originated the 1800’s, when ladies wore heavy gowns that needed to be supported off the floor. The bustle is held up by a series of hooks and eyes that are discreetly hidden in the folds of the material.
Bridal train sets world record in Romania. A Bucharest fashion house has set a Guinness World Record for the longest bridal train in history, beating the previous record held by a Dutch designer. It took ten seamstresses 100 days to create the nearly two-mile-long ivory train, which billowed high above a main boulevard in Romania’s capital on Tuesday as the bridal dress was displayed from a hot-air balloon. The creation was worn by 17-year-old model Ema Dumitrescu to promote this year’s Wedding Fair in Bucharest. In 2009, a Chinese bride famously got married in a 1.4 mile-long wedding dress that took more than 200 guests over three hours to unroll. The previous record for the world’s longest train stood at 2,488 metres.
