When did white wedding dresses become fashionable? Photo by Michael Gordon
by Richard Senate
In looking at the photographs of the family in the parlor of the old Olivas Adobe one is struck that many are wedding pictures that depict the brides that are many times not wearing white dresses. That was a tradition that didn’t take hold for many years after Queen Victoria was married in white lace.
It was believed that the color selected for a wedding dress would determine what sort of marriage one might have and what colors to absolutely avoid. They even had a poem for it;
Marry in white, you have selected right,
Marry in blue, your love will be true,
Marry in pearl, you will live in a whirl,
Marry in brown, you will live in town,
Marry in red, you will wish yourself dead,
Marry in yellow, you will be ashamed of your fellow,
Marry in green, you will be ashamed to be seen,
Marry in pink, your troubles will sink,
Marry in gray, you will move far away,
Marry in black, you will never come back.
The wedding of Sarita Olivas and Anton Peters hangs on the wall and she is wearing a black wedding dress showing she is in mourning for a lost loved one. Perhaps that wasn’t a good idea. Two years after that picture was taken Sarita was dead, having died in the birth of her first child, a son who lived.
Several ghost sightings seem to be those of brides, mostly seen at the chapel where history tells us weddings were held. One, panic stricken fleeing the chapel in a long white dress, perhaps it wasn’t white but pearl? More recently another phantom woman was seen in the chapel her dress was pink, and yet another ghostly bride was dressed in a brown dress.
