Even though weddings primarily celebrate love, they also celebrate fashion. Millions of men and women around the world honor their marriages with laundry lists of adornments and arrangements; the couture, of course, is typically ranked high.

Society has been spoon-feeding us happily ever afters from our earliest days. We grew up watching each Disney princess find her prince, and find joy today reading about our favorite celebrities agreeing to spend the rest of their lives together. We watch Love is Blind, Say Yes to the Dress, and Bridezillas, and dream of having our own fabulous wedding one day– so it’s no wonder the market for love is massive.

In 2020, there were 62 million married couples in the United States alone. Each of these pairs spent an average of about $2,000 on their outfits, marking the wedding industry market size, measured by revenue, $57.9 billion as of 2022. For an event as monumental as choosing our life partner, it only makes sense that we want to look and feel our very best.

Traditional wedding day style is pretty tried and tested. For straight couples, we expect the big white dress and the sleek black tux. While this look is timeless and stunning, a more recent influx of same sex, trans, and nonbinary weddings have shown us that the rules don’t need to be so fixed. The fashion of matrimony can be colorful, bohemian, matchy, electric, and unconventional. Think the pairing of pastels, twinning contemporary suits, sharp tailoring, jumpsuits, flower crowns, and statement blazers.

I naturally recall one of my favorite moments of Sex and the City 2: the wedding of Stanford Blatch (Willie Garson) and Anthony Marantino (Mario Cantone). The two men celebrate their love in style, sporting contrasting black and white tuxedos paired with extravagant bow ties and corsages. Even Carrie Bradshaw – who is almost always dressed femininely – wears a black tuxedo and funky lace headpiece to the wedding, further contributing to its uniqueness and defying the normative fashions of a typical white wedding.

With all that’s occurred since the emergence of COVID-19, couples are now getting more inventive and imaginative as they plan their weddings than ever before. While weddings in 2021 were less about the glitz and the glam in the midst of chaos and the unknown, weddings in 2022 are predicted to be significantly jubilant, while serving as “a reflection of couples’ values”, according to The Knot, a media and technology company that provides content, tools, products and services for couples who are planning weddings. Brooklyn-based event planner Jove Meyer says that, "they're diving deep into crafting their celebrations to look like them, feel like them, smell like them…”. With a strong universal craving for human connection, couples want their marriages to look and feel especially personal.

Weddings are like works of art – curated and carefully composed with technique and attention to detail. After extensive planning, they allow for people to come together, be festive, celebrate, and bask in one of the world’s most universal qualities: love. Whether you’re getting married in a classic white gown or a hot pink jumpsuit, weddings call for ultimate creativity in couture.

https://my.ibisworld.com/us/en/industry/nn006/about