[custom_adv] The history of the wedding dress is shorter than the history of weddings, and even shorter still than the history of marriage. An ancient Chinese myth contains one of the oldest known references to such a garment, and it goes something like this:Once upon a time, in a green and misty country at the center of the world, there lived a clever dog who was also a dragon. Naturally, he was unmarried. [custom_adv] This dragon-dog, named Panhu, was the servant of an emperor, who was at war with a fractious general. One day, the emperor proclaimed that any man who could bring him the head of his enemy would be given the hand of his daughter in marriage.Panhu was not a man, but being loyal and courageous he promised to become one upon vanquishing the enemy so he could marry the princess. [custom_adv] He succeeded, changed into human form, and was engaged to the emperor’s daughter. To make sure that the union was a lucky one, the empress dressed the princess in a beautiful phoenix dress and phoenix crown, and Panhu carried his bride off to live in the southern mountains. They were happy and had many children. When it came time for their own daughter to marry, a real phoenix flew out of a mountain and presented the girl with a colorful phoenix dress all her own. [custom_adv] Nowadays, whether we are referring to the voluminous white confections found in Western bridal magazines or the sleek red phoenix dresses with mythical roots that are still worn by brides in China today, the wedding dress has become its own kind of talisman. We tend to focus on color, with white being the preferred choice for brides in the West, from Norway to Argentina, and red being the more appropriate color for traditional Eastern brides, be they from South Sudan or Singapore [custom_adv] We ascribe meaning to these color choices, as if white could only suggest purity and new beginnings, while red could only signify life, luck, and celebration. But this has not always been the case, and the wedding dresses we hail as “traditional” are, for the most part, relatively modern, no matter where they come from. [custom_adv] Unlike swans, ospreys, coyotes, and termites, the primates known as Homo sapiens do not generally mate for life. While some of us naked apes may find one partner and stay with them forever, never straying, history tells us that it has not been the norm for our species. Nevertheless, marriage, a social technology, has sprung up in most societies and on every inhabited continent. [custom_adv] For the majority of its existence, marriage has been a worldly matter, having to do with the transfer of property, the creation and support of children, the tracking of bloodlines, and the control of women. For these reasons, it was usually a man-woman affair, regardless of a society’s feelings toward homosexuality. But although there have been marriages throughout most of human civilization, this does not mean that there were weddings. [custom_adv] There are, for example, no wedding ceremonies involving an exchange of vows in the Bible. Marriages were made official through the signing of a contract or some other means of formalized agreement, but a marriage was not generally considered to be a spiritual or even romantic occasion. And because there were no weddings, for a long time there could be no true wedding dresses, either. [custom_adv] While the peoples of ancient Summer, Babylon, and Assyria celebrated romantic and erotic love in art and poetry, the question of marriage was far more transactional. Herodotus’s Histories tell of the Babylonian marriage market, where each year the marriageable young girls were brought before a crowd of men who bid for them, like slaves, based on their beauty. [custom_adv] One can surmise that the women of Babylon’s marriage market were expected to look market-ready, so as to fetch the highest possible price (as well as, presumably, be sold into the most comfortable circumstances). Herodotus does not say what these women wore, but it’s likely that someone tried to make sure they looked their best, like apples shined up for display in the apple cart. [custom_adv] Close-fitting dresses, often with a puffy shoulder sleeve, became increasingly popular by the late 1980s. [custom_adv] In 1875 the British artist Edwin Long painted an interpretation of the scene, based on Herodotus’s description as well as imagery from Assyrian artifacts. All the potential brides in Long’s painting wear draped garments in cream or white, while the men bidding for them wear a mix of darker hues. But this color scheme has more to do with Victorian ideas of virgins and weddings and purity—associations that almost certainly did not exist in the ancient world—than any real historical precedent. [custom_adv] Still, at certain times and in certain places, ideas about the kind of beauty or virtue that a new bride should possess have snagged on a story, a myth, a part of culture, or a famous marriage, and traditions and superstitions have precipitated. Over time, these precipitations have calcified into ceremony.