Timeless?

As you research options for your wedding, you’ll read and hear a lot about making your day ‘timeless.’ I’m here to tell you this is not something you can truly have.

Your wedding will happen on one specific day. Your choices will be affected by what is available to you at that time. What kinds of dresses are available? What food is popular? What colors? What techniques are popular in photography? What techniques are even available? Every single one of these questions and dozens more will determine as much about what your wedding looks like as your personal taste does.

And you know what? That’s okay.

One day people will pick up your photo album or see your gown carefully preserved in your closet, and chances are they’ll have a pretty good idea of when you got married.

Strapless wedding gowns will become just as dated as ones made to fit over bustles and tightly-laced corsets. Lilies and hydrangeas are hugely popular now, but they will go out of style, just as carnations did. Candy bars and ice luges will be clues to the date of your wedding every bit as much as cakes with fountains in them and powder blue tuxes with ruffled shirt fronts.

Does this mean that one day people will look at your wedding album and think ‘oh good grief, how tacky!’? Very likely, though not necessarily. One generation’s classy is another generation’s laughable, true, but some things are harder to laugh at than others.

Take, for instance, Grace Kelly’s famous wedding gown.
There’s no denying that this gown could only have been made when it was. It is 1956 from top to toe.

Created by costume designer Helen Rose, it had all the combined glamor of a royal wedding and Hollywood rolled into one. It’s made of the best materials available. The design is influenced by the best of the best style work of the time. Nobody is going to call anything about that gown tacky or unfortunate.

And yet, it remains entirely 1956. It is dated. So is the wedding party. If anything, they’re even more dated:

Chances are you aren’t going to have the same resources Grace Kelly did in planning your wedding. You won’t have a world famous designer making your wedding outfit from the best materials in the world, nor will you have a team of top designers and a huge staff to make everything happen.

You’re going to have an ordinary budget, more or less. You may or may not choose to hire professional help in a variety of ways, but you’ll have to pick and choose what you want done for you and what you’re willing (and able) to do for yourself. Obviously that makes it more difficult to come up with the sort of design work that won’t ever make anyone look at what you picked and wonder what possessed you. When you have to balance a tight budget you can’t have the most expensive options.

You know what? That’s okay, too.

In the long run, you’re not getting married to put on a show. You’re not having the wedding to flaunt your money or to prove your amazing taste. You’re marrying the person you love because you want to spend your lives together. You’re throwing the party to share your joy with your family and friends. Whether you have a million bucks to spend or barely enough to scrape together what you need for the license and an officiants’ fee, you should pick what you love most.

What matters in the end isn’t whether your wedding is expensive or budget conscious, whether it’s a huge blowout or an intimate celebration, you should pick and choose from what’s available with more concern for self-expression and the comfort of guests than fear of what others will think of your wedding album in years to come. If you love a trend, follow it. If you hate it or can’t afford it, then don’t.

Take a look at this picture. In twenty years, nearly everyone will be able to tell it was taken somewhere around the time it was, 2009. The gown is close-fitting with a halter neckline and a lot of beading. The hair is worn artfully soft, sleek, and loose. Even the shade of her lipstick and the groom’s glasses frames will one day help people date this picture as coming from the first decade of the twenty-first century. But the joy portrayed is delightful, and while fashions will inevitably change, I don’t think this is going to look just plain tacky at any time.
Dated? Yes. But I’d want something like this in my photo album, and I bet you wouldn’t kick it out of yours, either.