Manolo for the Brides

After reading the post title, you may be thinking “Bridal diapers? Wha?” Or maybe you’re thinking, yeah, I read that post on Diary of a Marie Claire Fashionista, too. Since that post hit the airwaves on June 17, you have bridal bloggers and brides alike asking if this is some new trend. Will brides in 2011 all be rocking absorbent underpants? Will David’s start carrying Depends? I’m grateful to be able to tell you that the answer is no. The bride of tomorrow will continue to cope with urinating in wedding dresses that are difficult to maneuver the old fashioned way – by having the maid of honor or MOB hold her skirt while she squats.

Let me repeat myself: Bridal diapers are not the new ‘it’ accessory. And thank goodness for that. How do I know? I did a little digging.

The earliest media mention of bridal diapers that I could find was in Rashomama, a 2006 episode of CSI, and it was an offhanded comment made by someone being questioned with the implication that he was joking. A customized search that only looked for bridal diaper mentions from 2000 to 2005 netted me nothing. After that, it was a message board post from 2007 that read “does anyone know where I can buy a Bridal diaper? It seems that there is alot of info about them but nobody knows where to buy one” and was posted by one asklisa1985. Now asklisa1985 was around between 2007 and 2009, apparently, posting questions about diapers and bedwetting in other forums and also taking part in communities for people who, er, rather enjoy both spanking and diapers.

Yes, I actually dug that deep. I even did a GIS, which introduced me to a whole new segment of humanity that I hope never to meet. My whole reason for exposing myself to things that I can now never unsee was to try to verify this definition of bridal diaper I found on Urban Dictionary:

The Bridal Diaper is an urban legend circulated widely among Adult Baby and Diaper Lover communities. The legend is that it is a popular trend for brides to wear some form of diaper under their wedding dress. The legend is propagated as a fantasy of many fetishists, as male fetishists are attracted to the idea of a bride wearing a diaper under her dress, and female fetishists are attracted to the idea of wearing a diaper under their dress.

Thanks to internet message boards, a fairly small number of fetishists have been able to create rumors, anecdotes and reports that it is surprisingly popular for otherwise normal women to wear a disposable diaper as bridal lingerie. Going into an actual bridal boutique or asking people who really work in the wedding industry is more likely to elicit rolled eyes and sighs, as the legend is known by most professionals, albeit somewhat obscure.

My guess? If Courtney Dunlop, author of the Diary of a Marie Claire Fashionista post, actually rang up those bridal salons that she says carry bridal diapers, the salespeople, familiar by now with this piece of lore that gets yet another 15 minutes of fame every few years, wanted to mess with her head so they told a little white absorbent lie. I know it’s fun to hear something shocking like brides! are! wearing! diapers! omg! but after finding the aforementioned asklisa1985‘s handle multiple times on the Poise undergarments message boards, I find the whole thing rather unsavory. Sure, we all get to have a laugh at those wacky bridezillas and their unmanageable dresses, but there really are brides out there wearing things like Depends because they have to. Wouldn’t it be kind of sad if they felt like everyone was laughing at them, too?

This entry was posted on Monday, June 28th, 2010 at 5:53 am and is filed under Accessories, Advice, Brides, Dresses, Wedding Dresses. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.