What Wedding Dresses Around the World Look Like

I'm Beryl, and this week's Around the World topic is a little bit different. Surprisingly, the topic is not food-related. This week, we're looking at wedding dresses. Mini story time. I got married four years ago. My husband is from a city in northern India, so when we got married, we had two weddings. One in the United States, and one in India. The Indian wedding was just crazy. It was so much fun. I experienced so many things that I had never known about. The biggest one for me, though, was what I wore. It was my wedding dress. I had never seen or worn anything like that in my entire life, and I absolutely loved it. But that was the impetus for this episode. I know that a lot of women wear the white, Western-style gown on their wedding day, but that is not the default. Around the world, wedding dresses vary greatly from country to country. So for this episode, I spoke to seven dressmakers in seven countries to see the different types of wedding dresses around the world. So this is the wedding dress episode. First up, a dress full of color from Indonesia. Red means the heart that has lust and greed. Black means the land that has a good and unyielding mind. The kurang dress in Menangkabau has a very loose size. The length is above the knee. We usually use blue-drew, satin, and bridal materials. For the making of this dress, not everyone uses a machine, such as Sulaman Suji Koto Gadang, and the installation of beads and beads, which are all made by hand. All of them complement each other. In writing, this dress is a decoration on the head of the bride. And in writing, this dress is a burden or a burden that will be carried by the bride when she gets married later. Becoming a women's dressmaker in Indonesia has a great meaning, especially in my area, Menangkabau. It has a matrilineal lineage, a lineage that follows the mother, where women have a very high value that is highly respected. All the elements in Menangkabau women's dress are very important. Of course, the making of this dress has a high pressure. Because I really enjoy this job, I don't feel any difficulty. And I really like it step by step. Next, a dressmaker from Northern England. If I ever told you what a dress costs, I would be killed. My name's Thelma Medine. I am a wedding dress designer, mainly for the traveling community. I've been making wedding dresses for the last 30 years. My mother's a dressmaker, and all my family are into some sort of tailoring or dressmaking. Any girl's wedding day is important, and the dress is important. But in the traveling community, the wedding dress is something that's dreamed about from when they're like three, four years old. They start drawing their wedding dress when they're that young, and that's how important it is to them to have the perfect dress for the perfect day. They want to look like a princess. They want everyone to gasp when they walk down the aisle. The dresses have got to be white. They've got to be white. But what they put on the dress, the decoration, is loads of Swarovski crystal, pearls, and things like that. So they like it blinged up. They want to stand out. A typical dress, you're looking at least 5,000 crystals on it, usually more. And fabrics, you're looking like 40, 50 meters. We import fabrics from all over the world, and it's always the best. Dutchess, satin, silks. Satin's a man-made fiber, so they can be really white. The time for us to make all the decoration and all the understructure is approximately 300 hours. I think the thing I like most about making these dresses is waiting for the customer's reaction when they see it. We do a big reveal. You're sort of holding your breath until they've seen it and you see the relief in their face and when they're really happy with it, and it's like a sigh of relief. Wow. Yeah, they love it. Next up, a dressmaker and beader from the Cheyenne tribe in Oklahoma. To my Ponca people, I am Datchuke Nange. My given name is Kenna Taylor. I am an enrolled member of the Ponca Nation of Oklahoma. I also represent the Cheyenne, the Pawnee, and the Southern Ute. I am an artist. My main focus is beading. Every tribe has a different style of dress. So these are Southern Cheyenne buckskin dresses. Cheyenne dresses traditionally have the strips on them. And on the skirt, they have curves, and those represent the mountains. We also have the cones. They are to scare away bad spirits. Creating buckskin dresses are extremely hard, but it's also really exciting too. We use elk hide, deer hide. It's usually white, as white as you can get it. They can be colorful, depending on the type of beads you use. They usually consist of the four colors, red, yellow, white, and black. They represent the different peoples of the world. Buckskin dresses could easily go up to $10,000, depending on how much work and how intricate the beadwork is. My favorite part about making the dress would probably be actually the last stitch, bringing it all together. At the end of the day, what I love the most is seeing my creation being worn and being cherished. I think it is a sense that you can go back into the past. That just gives them a sense of pride, knowing that they are representing their tribe in a good way, and that they get to wear their traditional clothing on their special day. That's what I like the most, is seeing my work being loved. Next up, a dress made with gold from Tunisia. My name is Ahlem Elambouli. I've been making this dress for 25-26 years. This dress is made with silk from our great-great-great-grandparents. It's been around for centuries. It's called a Qamijja. We make it out of silk. After the Qamijja, we make it out of jabda. After the jabda, we make it out of kufiya. After the kufiya, we make it out of brinjkia. After the brinjkia, we make it out of khtamra. It's what you put on your face. The colors used in this traditional dress are yellow and green. The green one is for life, and the yellow one is for money and everything else. It's made out of silver, glass, cotton, and gold. This dress weighs 10 kilos. It takes 5-6 months to make. The most difficult thing in Tunisia is to get the kufiya and khtamra. That's the most difficult thing. It's expensive in Tunisia. It requires a lot of concentration. It takes a lot of time and effort to prepare it for the wedding. I can't describe how I feel about it. I love it more than anything else. I love it. From India, a dressmaker and the same style of dress that I wore on my wedding day. My name is Karan Torani. I'm a designer. I feel like Indian fashion in general completely revolves around weddings. What happens in India is that we have these beautiful, different cultures coming together. Everybody follows a different tradition. But we have this mehenga choli, which centers the universe of Indian bridal wear. It's an extension of Indian wear from the older eras. We have a typical choli, which kind of looks like a crop top and paired with a skirt. But probably with a lot more flounce. And the entire outfit is eventually paired with a loose fabric, which a girl wears on her body. Sometimes over the head, like a veil, as per the bride's needs. Chanderi is one of the main focus fabrics, which is hand-woven. It's a mix of cotton and silk. Embroidery stars take months and months and months. Then it comes to stitching. A really elaborate wedding outfit would probably take easily three kilos of just simple sitaras or beads, which just get all over the outfit. In India, we are known about our craftsmanship, the embroideries, the finesse. Of course, it is a high-pressure job. I want the bride to literally beam with an infectious joy that makes everybody around her beam. From Ghana, a kente dressmaker. My name is Kojo Japone. I am a kente dressmaker. Kente is a type of dress that is made of silk. In Ghana, we call it ajiyakun. The kente that we make is called ajiyakun, because it is made of three layers of silk. It is made of two layers of silk, each of which is made of three layers of silk. The material that we use to make the kente is silk. The color of the kente is yellow and red. We use yellow and red to make the kente. The kente is called ajiyakun because it is made of two layers of silk. And finally, in Sweden, we spoke to a traditional folk dressmaker. My name is Fia Mokalös Lindblom. I'm an embroiderer. I do a lot of crafts and folk costume as well. The wedding dress in the Swedish culture is important. It's meant to signal festivity. The name of this dress is Vånga dress. Vånga is a small parish outside of Norrköping in Sweden. It's a black silk taffeta dress. To decorate the dress, we'd use white or gold lace and glass beads and pearls. And also, you make small flowers out of paper or fabric scraps. I have a favorite part of this gown. At the bottom of the skirt, there's a check pattern. I think it's adorable. And under this dress, there will be three layers of wool skirts to make the dress stand out like a bell. One of the most important elements is the crown. It's big and heavy. It's from Virgin Mary. It's something almost a bit royal about a girl who wears a crown. Today, we see more people wearing folk costume and folk wedding dresses. I think mostly in the countryside, where the cultural heritage is a bit stronger. This is one way of preserving, but also developing, the cultural heritage of Sweden. I really loved making this episode. I loved seeing all of the different dresses, how they are adorned, how beautiful they all were. It was such a cool thing to do. And while the dresses, obviously, were really different, there was this through line of the dressmakers. Obviously, they're all very skilled at their craft, but when I asked them what the most important thing about their job was, they all said the same thing. It made me feel really good to hear. I hope that the women who use the dresses I make will look beautiful, graceful, and graceful. And of course, satisfied with the results of my work. I hope they feel comfortable, happy, joyful, and the prettiest they've ever been. I hope she wears it proudly, and that they feel the most prettiest in this, because they are representing their tribe and their culture. And so, it makes them feel special, and it gives them honor that they are wearing that particular style of dress. For that day, she's Cinderella for the day. And that's what they want. They are special. They've waited for this day for... since they were like three, four years old. So, the most important day of their life is this day. A bride celebrates not just her wedding, her outfit, but the entire process of this journey her own way. There's a lot of emotional pressure, a lot of societal pressure of what the right thing to do is. The idea is to do it your way and just celebrate it.