If you enter a Karate class first time wearing a Gi and a black belt, knowing what it means is disrespectful because you didn't earn it. why is it normal that women get married wearing a white dress?

Safinated · 2023-08-13T11:20:48+00:00

Because Queen Victoria did it, and everyone started doing it, next question

It’s a fad tradition, not a virginity promise

In japan, the woman’s headdress is supposed to hide her horns of female anger. I’m sure there’s other weird traditions out there that no one interprets as reflecting reality

tinasnow-poty · 2023-08-13T10:44:04+00:00

Idk about other denominations but I know people can’t just waltz into Catholic Churches and get married. Both partners must be baptised and you have to be a member of the parish and go through marriage preparation with the priest. There’s usually a set waiting period, like 6 months or whatever. It’s not a free for all, or at least it’s not supposed to be.

Regarding the wearing white thing… it’s simply the norm.

I don’t think your analogies work because karate, degrees, medicine are all practical things whereas religion/faith are abstract and people can be “culturally religious” even when they’re not religious. It’s like people who aren’t religious celebrating Christmas, they’re being culturally Christian.

MarBitt · 2023-08-13T11:52:19+00:00

Sometime in the late 1840s the American women's magazine Godey's Lady's Book incorrectly stated:

“Custom has decided, from the earliest ages, that white is the most fitting hue, whatever may be the material. It is an emblem of the purity and innocence of girlhood, and the unsullied heart she now yields to the chosen one.”

The tradition did not exist at that time, it was a new fashion trend since the wedding of Queen Victoria in the 1840 which the American magazine considered the role model. With the highly unusual white wedding dress, the queen most likely did not want to express that she was special among women by being a virgin at the wedding, but that she would be a sensible and modest queen. It was a very bold fashion move, as white was associated with mourning at the time. Until then, women routinely married in colorful richly decorated dresses, full of jewels if they had the money to do so.

Moreover, white does not have only possible symbolic interpretation of virginity, but also a new beginning. Which actually the wedding is in that relationship. One phase of a relationship ends and another begins.

By the way, the red "flame" color is probably more traditional for wedding dresses, including the early church tradition, which probably came from Roman and Greek traditions. The color red is associated in many cultures with luck and wealth and perhaps it was also supposed to ward off evil spirits from the bride. It's harder to see through the red veil, so someone had to bring the bride to the altar...

FightMeCthullu · 2023-08-13T15:11:08+00:00

I mean…..different cultures have different wedding colours though? Like, everyone here has already brought up Queen Victoria starting the “white wedding dress” trend, but even without that, wedding dresses had different fashions and meanings across history.

Looking at Italy, for example, where my family is from:

In many parts of Italy, the traditional wedding colour was green, historically. To represent fertility.

In the 1580s, burgundy was a popular colour for wedding dresses. In fact, the subject of the painting “Portrait of a Noblewoman” by Lavinia Fontana is theorised to be in her wedding dress due to the known popularity of burgundy as a wedding colour, and the woman’s dress being burgundy.

Speaking of the 1500s, in that time, there was a “tradition” of the groom gifting the bride a small fur pelt for her shoulder/neck to wear to symbolise fertility and protection in labour.

And for a period around that time, blue was the colour associated with chastity when it came to dresses.

If you were rich you did the above, if you were poor you wore whatever counted as your “best dress”.

In India and China, the common traditional colours are red. In Ghana, the traditional clothes are bright and use the family pattern.

Traditions and customs vary from culture to culture to time period to time period. White was not always the traditional colour for Europe. It was a fashionable colour post Queen Victoria , and white = virginal bride was attached after that.

Your argument does not consider the broader scope history, or the simple fact that white was not a practical colour and most people in most cultures would not have been able to afford white cloth and were more likely to wear whatever they could.

Devourer_of_felines · 2023-08-13T13:10:12+00:00

I'm just curious, if a lot of people aren't even religious, why do you need to marry in a church in white?

Because it’s not a need it’s a want. Lots of women like the aesthetic of it. Just because a style of garment traditionally meant ______ back in ye olde days doesn’t mean it holds the same meaning now.

sexualdeskfan · 2023-08-13T10:38:08+00:00

Because society doesn’t really give a shit about white = virginity anymore. A wedding dress is just a dress women wear to get married.

RatchedAngle · 2023-08-13T13:13:38+00:00

Because a black belt is a sign of hard work and dedication. It requires years of training. It requires skill and experience and devotion to martial arts.

A white dress just means a penis hasn’t entered you yet. In today’s world, very few people are virgins when they get married. Most men don’t give a damn if their non-virgin wives wear white wedding dresses.

I have only slept with my husband but we had sex before marriage. He won’t care if I wear a white wedding dress.

It’s bizarre that we even feel the need to announce (through color of a dress) whether a woman is a virgin or not.

What about the husband? Can he only wear a black suit if he doesn’t have any baby mamas lingering around? No STIs? No crazy ex-hookups who still show up in his DMs?

Makuta_Servaela · 2023-08-13T15:28:56+00:00

If you're not religious, then by definition wearing a white dress means nothing to you except style. And even in religion, barely anyone expects it to actually mean virginity. It's more like walking around wearing a feather by your ear: in some Native American cultures, it means something significant. To pretty much everyone else, it's just a stylistic choice, or at the very least is a common trend to some groups, like hippies.

diaryofalostgirl · 2023-08-13T14:36:50+00:00

So, I don't need to marry in a church in white.

If I get married, my ideal situation is the courthouse with a JOP. I will probably be wearing a white gown because I have one and it's objectively my best color, but it's not a "wedding gown" so much as it's a white formal that happens to look bridal with an updo. (Which I found out when people kept telling me so at the event I attended. Uh, whoops?)

But if my hypothetical fiancé asks me to get a new gown just for him, in another color, I'll do it. I'll ask him what colors he loves me in. It's his wedding too. The important part is the two of us gathering our families together to witness our joining in marriage. Weddings pale in importance next to that.

Freethinker312 · 2023-08-13T15:15:03+00:00

I'm just curious, if a lot of people aren't even religious, why do you need to marry in a church in white?

You don't need to. As far as I know, there are no churches that officially require the bride to wear white. Moreover, I know of churches where wearing white is not allowed at all, because no one, even a virgin bride, is without any sins.

CountMandrake · 2023-08-14T06:44:30+00:00

You understand that marriage doesn't really makes sense in this day and age where you have paternity tests and divorce right?

The ceremony of marriage is basically a fetish for women. It taps deep into the female lizzard brain or something.

Dudes just do it to have the stag party. We love to party.

MistyMaisel · 2023-08-13T13:43:42+00:00

The white dress is no longer about representing purity, it is literally just fashion. It is nothing like martial arts belts speaking as someone with a blue belt. My blue belt speaks of my time, dedication, and skill to my chosen art form, it shows where I am in a social skill based hierarchy of a very specific bubble, and it isn't fashion. If you wear a black belt, the consequences beyond disrespect are you getting your ass beats and humiliated perhaps dangerously because people will assume you know things you don't. Worse if you somehow end up teaching and mislead others. The consequences of wearing a white dress are.....you look fabulous? Really, there's no downsides. It isn't even disrespectful.

Speaking as someone who works for a church, you don't just waltz in and get married. We force you to go through marriage counseling with us, you're required to both profess membership at a church, and so forth.

And no, we don't somehow feel it is ignoring the church traditions if a bride wears white and isn't a virgin. After all, most religions with churches believe in being born again and the wages of sin being paid. She has been made pure and sanctified through her relationship with the almighty. It is not for man to decide matters which belong to God.

Tl:dr: stop trying to humiliate women who have sex before marriage. Or, if you must, start humiliating men too. It's not like religions think men who have sex before marriage aren't impure too in need of purifying.

Kandace21 · 2023-08-13T16:19:53+00:00

Because white wedding dresses have nothing to do with virginity? They became fashionable after Queen Victoria chose to wear white to her wedding with Prince Albert. Before that western women just wore their best dress. I swear some of you think the world was invented in the 1950s 🙄

AnyIntroduction3288 · 2023-08-13T15:59:01+00:00

I don’t know of any churches where people can just waltz in and get married. Even in the less religious churches, you need to at least be a member and get to know the pastor.

Furthermore, in 2023, everybody knows that not all brides are virgins before marriage. A white wedding dress doesn’t symbolize purity anymore in our culture.

Furthermore, a black belt in karate is worn only for karate-related activities as a public statement about a person’s karate skills. A wedding dress is simply a public statement about marriage, not virginity. It simply means “I am getting married today” in most settings.

It sounds like you’re just angry that many brides aren’t virgins anymore and want to have some sort of visual for brides who aren’t virgins, like a Scarlett letter “A”. Frankly, a woman’s virginity is nobody’s business but her own and her husbands.

AhsokaSolo · 2023-08-13T16:05:39+00:00

Because people think white is pretty and society doesn't think is signifies virginity anymore. Also people love tradition.

But I highly encourage people to be creative with weddings. It's a lot cheaper and way more fun.

januaryphilosopher · 2023-08-13T16:56:09+00:00

It's just a colour? People wear white all the time. And it's kind of appropriate for marriage, as the traditional colour you marry in. The equivalent to your scenarios would be a wedding guest wearing white, which is a faux pas. And most people have some form of religious belief so might like to get married in a place connected to that, and again it's traditional and appropriate. (Fun fact, in England you can't actually legally marry anywhere but a church or council office.) These days it's more common to marry outside church and brides often wear not-white and not-dresses anyway.

Sweet_Reflexion · 2023-08-13T18:51:12+00:00

"submitted 8 hours ago"

I wonder if anyone has succeeded in making sense of OP's speech yet.

Sophiatab · 2023-08-13T20:33:53+00:00

The Victorians associated white with joy. Also, being able to use a new, expensive, but largely useless dress for a wedding was a way Victorian families showed off their wealth.

MantisToboganMD · 2023-08-13T21:15:13+00:00

This is the new funniest post to hit my feed from this sub.

GodspeedHarmonica · 2023-08-14T09:20:03+00:00

Because most people are clueless what traditional clothing signals. Just look at all the men getting married in tuxedos. If their women knew what that signals, they would never marry them. But it's most likely it's the women themselves who wants him to wear a tux.

Embarrassing, but people generally are clueless about basic stuff

Durmyyyy · 2023-08-14T18:02:48+00:00

Because no one cares and no one expects a woman to be a virgin on their wedding day for the most part.

philseven12 · 2023-08-13T16:23:38+00:00

The wedding is a woman's ultimate flex day

MarBitt · 2023-08-13T11:12:08+00:00

And what do you think a white wedding dress means and why do you think women don't earn it?

Cethlinnstooth · 2023-08-13T17:34:33+00:00

There's two people at every altar who can refuse to marry if they don't like the details of it all. There's also the priest...the priest can refuse to marry them. And if the brides family is as traditional paying for the dress they could refuse to do that.

And none of them do.

You appear to be one of very few people who still gives a shit about the bit of Victorian Era public relations shenanigans which resulted in this new "tradition". I mean seriously dude what did Queen Victoria do for you and your people to be still licking her clit so hard two hundred years later? Do you even hold citizenship in a country that is under the British crown?

kkkan2020 · 2023-08-13T13:58:43+00:00

Somewhere along the lines meanings and reasons behind every thing get corrupted

Still_Succotash5012 · 2023-08-13T16:04:03+00:00

Because we as a western society place no value on female chastity anymore. I would assume if you brought up "You're not a virgin, why are you wearing white to your wedding?" to most women these days, they wouldn't have even made that connection. No one actually understands what marriage used to represent anymore. It's a contract with the state now, nothing more.

DecisionPlastic9740 · 2023-08-13T17:43:09+00:00

They're not accountable for their actions

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Novadina · 2023-08-13T16:43:45+00:00

I’m not sure what institution has a meaning behind a white dress, but most people probably don’t get married in that particular institution that has whatever meaning this is. If I wear a black karate belt in my own house it’s not any issue, so why would someone wearing a white dress at their wedding party at the community center matter?

I'm not religious, I'm just curious, if a lot of people aren't even religious, why do you need to marry in a church in white?

I have been to a lot of weddings, and only one was in a church, and that church was not a denomination that had this religious practice of a white dress meaning something specific. Is it common where you live for even non religious people to go to a specific traditional church with deep meanings like this? To non karate people regularly go to karate places there too? Aside from the one church, the weddings I’ve been to have been at a synagogue, a few parks, backyards, by the water, a zoo, lots of event centers… None of these places have any meaning of importance about the color white, and aside from the church and synagogue they are all just businesses you can pay to host a party in their building or privately owned property.

If you own a church with this deeply held belief about white dresses, you are free to forbid anyone from entering with a white dress, just like if someone owned a karate center they could make rules about wearing certain colored belts. But for other buildings you don’t own I don’t see why it’s any of your business what people wear.

operation-spot · 2023-08-13T17:32:02+00:00

A white dress is just a wedding tradition and expectation so why are you placing so much value in it and virginity. People know their partners before getting married and everyone is on the same page.

RonMexico432 · 2023-08-14T16:23:13+00:00

You're going to throw your back out grasping at that straw. Be careful.

Scarce12 · 2023-08-14T16:51:19+00:00

It's tradition, as you see on the replies.

AlmostKindaGreat · 2023-08-17T05:56:31+00:00

Because it’s tradition and people don’t care about what it used to mean.

Would you really expect virgins to wear one thing and non-virgins to wear another? Should the groom wear something to signify whether he is a virgin or not? That would be fair, right?

Ok_Relationship_705 · 2023-08-18T14:38:59+00:00

Because I'm most likely fucking her before we get married anyway. Neither one of us are pure.

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