Traditional Ancient Roman Wedding Dress

Ancient roman clothing started out as homespun wool garments but over time garments were produced by craftspeople and wool was supplemented with linen cotton and silk.

Traditional ancient roman wedding dress. Romans wore shoes or walked barefoot. Brides have worn veils ever since. The traditional roman wedding dress consisted of a plain white woollen tunica recta overlaid by a white stola. While there are some differences especially regarding ages and choice of spouse the similarities that have survived are quite remarkable.

Wool was chosen as a lucky fabric that repelled evil. Clothing in ancient rome generally comprised a short sleeved or sleeveless knee length tunic for men and boys and a longer usually sleeved tunic for women and girls. There were many other rituals and details that went into a roman wedding such as a young girl would give her bulla the special locket given to her at birth to her father and never wear it again. Ancient greeks and romans thought the veil protected the bride from evil spirits.

After the wedding there would be a dinner for the bride and groom usually held at the brides house. The roman wedding is the basis for many modern western marriage customs. Marriage in ancient rome conubium was a strictly monogamous institution. One of the wedding traditions of ancient rome in regards to the bridal attire is the parting of hair into six locks perhaps using a tool named the celibate spear hasta caelibaris in latin hersch 2014.

The following is a list of some basic wedding customs in ancient rome. The average american couple spends between 17 000 and 27 000 on their wedding. The fashion for women at weddings was fairly simple and the bride s dress was no exception. About her waist was a woollen sash tied with a hercules knot again to ward off evil.

By today s standards it was very plain. A roman citizen by law could have only one spouse at a time. The practice of monogamy distinguished the greeks and romans from other ancient civilizations in which elite males typically had multiple wives greco roman monogamy may have arisen from the egalitarianism of the democratic and republican political systems of. On her wedding day grace kelly wore a dress with a bodice made from beautiful 125 year old lace.

Ancient roman bridal fashion. A white or off white one piece unfitted tunic. Of course jackie kennedy s bridesmaids were far from frumpy. On formal occasions adult male citizens could wear a woolen toga draped over their tunic and married citizen women wore a woolen mantle known as a palla over a stola a simple long sleeved voluminous garment that hung to.

Traditional ornamentation of the bride was also simple and protective. Back to the future.