Looking at 'Ridiculous Vintage Bridesmaids Dresses' Photographs Is Like Taking a Step Back in Time

By Amanda Thomason March 10, 2019 at 12:06pm

Wedding planning is full of decision making that has the potential to impact the rest of your adult life. Many details will be forgotten (unless they went horribly wrong), but photos last.

What you wear, how you style your hair and makeup and the people you choose to be in your bridal party are all decisions that will be proudly displayed in frames and photo books for the foreseeable future — and those pictures don’t lie.

Choosing colors and styles for bridesmaids dresses has long posed some difficulties: if some of your bridesmaids don’t like what you’ve selected, they can be real pills.

Or, perhaps even worse, they may just go silent and say nothing. Whether these photos are a result of quiet dissent or full-fledged controversy, they’re certainly representative of past styles.

Here we have a lovely assortment of Easter eggs. Not quite a full rainbow, but close enough. Orange only looks good on some people, anyway.

At least their flowers match, and honestly other than looking like most store displays in March, the colors aren’t all that egregious.

This one is… difficult. As in, it’s difficult to tell where one woman ends and another begins.

Except for the bride in the middle, it would look like a cluster of floating faces on a backdrop of floral horror.

These gals have got the coordinating down pat. The purple is only enhanced by the vertical stripes (or creases, or whatever those are) and the fluffy collars, fascinators, hems and hand warmers.

The poodle and the penguin certainly stand out, but it’s almost like they were meant to be there.

This one is just… I don’t even know how they’re smiling, though the lady second from the right looks like she might be dead inside over the dress choices. One viewer’s comment sums this image up very nicely.

“The function of bridesmaids is to ensure that the bride looks her very best on one of the most important days of her life, by looking as horrible as possible, by comparison,” Lisa Nery Pinnell wrote, followed by #missionaccomplished.

This may, in fact, be the most ’80s picture in existence. The fabric, the hair, the colors… everything is just so quintessentially ’80s.

To be fair, many bridesmaid dresses in the past were made by the bridesmaids themselves or someone in the wedding party — few young women now could manage such a feat. And in 20 or 30 years, today’s bride and bridesmaid styles will probably be amusing in their own rights.

Whether these photos bring back fond memories or elicit a chuckle (you can see them all here), they’re certainly bold statements from a bygone era. How does your wedding style compare to these?

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