Donna Marie SanSevero chose a ruby red dress that contrasted nicely with the gritty backdrop of LES. (www.angelacappetta.com)
The moment blushing bride-to-be Esther Silber saw the runway pictures of the red Vera Wang wedding gown her friend posted on Facebook, she knew she’d met her dress. “I was always leaning towards a color,” says the Upper West Side philanthropist and gal about town. “Anything but white.”
As for red during the winter holiday season, when her NYC nuptials will take place: “It just seems so perfect to me,” says Silber, who is waiting breathlessly for her $7,500 blood-red strapless mermaid-fishtail wedding gown after hounding the Vera Wang boutique and locking in an appointment the first day the red dress was available, on Memorial Day. “I literally based my wedding day around the day the dress was going to arrive,” she says. “It’s to die for.”
She’s not the only one going crazy for color as she plans her walk down the aisle. More NYC brides are breaking from white — a tradition that only took hold in the 1800s, when Queen Victoria married in a white dress — and are embracing colors they say better suit their personalities.
Rich red, blue, black and pink wedding couture has been burning up fashion runways this season, with some of the hottest designers — including Wang, Oscar de la Renta and Carolina Herrera — unveiling hued bridal gowns haute off the runway. And it’s having a trickle-down effect throughout the market.
National chain David’s Bridal has witnessed huge growth in the color market.
“David’s Bridal has almost tripled its [season-to-date] sales of colored dresses over last year. Brides are
definitely looking for something new and are willing to step out from the comfort zone of white and ivory into other options,” says Catalina Maddox, executive vice president of merchandising.
“The runway is a huge influencer, but the fact that brides are marrying older in life allows them to have the freedom to decide what kind of event they really want to have, and not what tradition tells them to have.”
Of all the white wedding dresses Rebecca Lysen tried on, none stopped her in her tracks like the charcoal-lilac Vera Wang “Felicity” gown she found for her October 2011 wedding.
The Boerum Hill-based art director, 30, says she “definitely considered a white gown, but when I saw the purple one, I was in love with it.” Though she tried to keep the color of her dress under wraps, she doesn’t think her guests were surprised that she wasn’t a vision in white.
“I always wanted more of a runway look than a princess bride look,” she says.
The artistry of the gown, which cost nearly $5,000, was always more important to her than the color.
“I decided from the beginning this is my one moment to wear a couture gown — the one time I can wear a piece of artwork. People should do what they feel like,” she says. “And if that includes a purple wedding dress, so be it.”
Ashlea Halpern, editor of New York magazine’s summer 2012 weddings issue, agrees with this sentiment. “Tradition is boring,” she says. “It’s the girls who wear the crazy colors and the avant-garde fascinators that also throw the best parties. I sure know whose wedding I’d want to be invited to.”
DonnaMarie SanSevero, 40, of Forest Hills, chose a ruby red gown for her November 2010 wedding on the Lower East Side.
“[My dress] looked great against all of the concrete and blacktop and graffiti,” she says of the neighborhood. “I felt like a rock star.”
Although SanSevero, a paramedic for the FDNY, never considered wearing white herself, she doesn’t judge brides who do: “I think wearing white is kind of weird, since so few women actually look good in white. But, hey, it’s their choice.”
Miriam Baigorri is one bride who’s never worn white in her life — and she wasn’t about to start on her wedding day. “Green is my favorite color, and has much more meaning to me than white,” says the 35-year-old speech and language pathologist from Jackson Heights, Queens. Her knee-length green J.Crew wedding dress, purchased online and on sale for $50, met with approval from relatives at her February 2011 nuptials at her family’s second home in Puerto Rico. It makes sense: Baigorri’s mom got married, in 1974, wearing a blue and yellow dress.
Of course, this color trend is not entirely new: There have long been New York brides who’d rather die than wear white on their big day. Indian brides consider white the kiss of death — it’s the color Indians traditionally wear to funerals. Instead, they reach for vibrant colors for the wedding sari — including red, long considered a lucky color. And of the three dresses Chinese brides customarily wear to a traditional wedding, the rule is that one is always red.
Meanwhile, Reina Brill had only one rule for her March 2009 Brooklyn Lyceum wedding: “Anything but black!” The 40-year-old artist says she wouldn’t have been true to herself if she wore white. “All my work is really colorful,” she says. “I just think white is really uninspired.”
But finding her gown was no easy task. Brill, who lives on City Island, with her musician husband, Dan, remembers as a young girl telling her mother that she wanted to get married in a big ’50s-style ball gown in a big color. She finally found her periwinkle ball gown with crinoline after an exhaustive search that ended on an online site for prom wear.
Brides who can’t find their colored dream dress online are taking their swatches to custom dressmakers.
Raffaella Galeotafiore, 38, a trained designer and pattern maker, says that in the nine years since she founded the Solotu Bridal House in St. James, LI, white has lost its might.
Galeotafiore designs for up to 50 brides each year, but it wasn’t until last year that two brides requested custom top-to-bottom black wedding gowns — and she obliged.
“I’ve been doing color here and there for nine years — but last year was my first year of black,” says Galeotafiore. “And this year, almost every woman is asking for a little color. Once [brides] see these Oscar de la Rentas and Vera Wangs, they tend to follow the trends.”
That’s certainly the case at Couture de Bride in Teaneck, NJ, where colored wedding dresses drive 70 percent of business, according to Tova Marc, the shop’s owner and designer. Marc, 33, had a busy 2011, with more than 300 colored gowns — the most popular of which were black, red, purple, pink and champagne — and is projecting an even more colorful 2012 as demand rises due to word of mouth.
“I love my brides who wear white, and I love my brides who wear black,” says the designer. “I wore a white wedding dress to my own wedding — but for my 10-year renewal vows, I plan to wear a Gothic one.”
As for Silber, despite pleas from some friends hoping she’ll come to her senses — “You’ll regret it in 20 years,” they protest — she says she’s sticking to her dream of a crimson confection.
“No matter what, I’m in,” says Silber.
“This is the showstopper; this is the main event.”