The 2024 guide to bridal trends
From photography to fashion, this is how weddings will look in 2024.
Give people rules, and they’ll bend them and break them. That’s the way it goes with tradition, and that’s why, as we head into 2024, brides and grooms are toying with the idea of what a wedding looks like, pushing the needle when it comes to dress, location, photography, and the ceremony itself.
As we fix our eyes to the bridal horizon, a number of patterns emerge. Among them? A more practical attitude to matters of style and size, as couples begin to favour closeness and comfort, along with a yearning for nostalgia, achieved through old-school imagery and vintage-inspired decor.
Here, our wedding forecast for 2024.
Offbeat wedding dresses
If we’re honest with ourselves, the big white dress will never really go away. The last two years have seen an uptick in the popularity of more classic silhouettes: Grace Kelly’s Helen Rose gown, with its high neck, long sleeves and lustrous train, was a key point of reference for brides, along with Carolyn Bessette Kennedy’s simple Narciso Rodriguez slip and sheer gloves and Nicola Peltz Beckham’s Valentino number. Brides have been increasingly favouring bare silks and satins over heavy embellishments; that everyday and celebrity brides turned time and time again to Vivienne Westwood’s clean, corseted bridal dresses was proof of this arc towards a quieter luxury.
It’s a taste that will persist well into 2024, but will also acquire a certain quirkiness as the year progresses. More brides have been comfortable eschewing the ivory part of the dress code, opting for champagnes and antique blushes. In 2024, this experimentalism will continue, with black-and-white, pinks and blues on the rise. So too will hemlines rise, to the ankle à la Audrey Hepburn’s tea-length Givenchy gown in Funny Face, and to the thigh — no longer will minis be relegated to the reception, but walked down the aisle as any floor-sweeping dress would.
As for the labels on the frontier of cool and contemporary wedding dresses? Danielle Frankel, designer of choice for It-girls including Zoë Kravitz, Georgia Fowler and Julia Garner, leads the pack, along with London-based Wed, the bow-adorned Simone Rocha, the girlish Sandy Liang, and Molly Goddard.
No more bridesmaid uniforms
Gone are the days when bridesmaids wearing the same dress was the norm. There are benefits, of course, to that uniformity: some brides prefer symmetry and it’s easier to pick one design as opposed to one for each member of your bridal party. But the politics of selecting a dress that not every bridesmaid might like, and might not consider flattering, is also stressful, which is partly why couples are now encouraging their parties to choose their own outfits. They’ll be united by an element — a colour, perhaps, or a fabric or silhouette — but aside from the theme, each bridesmaid can bring something different to the table. It’s a method that preserves aesthetic cohesiveness, but also sentiment and personality. If you don’t want your ceremony to look over-glossed, this is an easy way to do it.
“I think the most successful approach is to give your bridal party a theme,” New York City-based wedding planner Jennifer Zabinski told Vogue, “whether it be jewel tones, floral, or perhaps metallics, and then let them decide what works best for their body type. The result will be a clutch of friends who feel beautiful and confident because they were involved in the process.”
Intimate ceremonies
As many extravagant, multi-day ceremonies celebrities threw this year, from Sofia Richie Grainge’s Chanel-filled week at the Hôtel du Cap-Eden-Roc in Antibes, to model Taylor Hill’s nuptials in the Colorado Rockies and actress Joey King’s floral Mallorcan bonanza, the overarching trend for brides was one of intimacy. Pin it down to the cost of living crisis, or simply to our new preference for minimalism, but couples are proving that, these days, the micro-wedding holds more appeal. Civil ceremonies, registry weddings and elopements — all take pride of place on the bridal menu for 2024.
Take Sarah Kourim, co-founder and designer of fashion brand Muse, for example, who eloped with husband James in a fisherman’s cottage on Sydney’s Mackerel Beach. “We didn’t want a traditional wedding; we wanted to elope,” Kourim shared with Vogue. “Just a celebration over lunch, rather than putting a label on it.” These sentiments were echoed by fellow bride and Vogue contributor Kristen Bateman, who expressed that an elopement was “the most luxurious thing I could think of”.
“I wouldn’t tease it on social media,” Bateman said. “No posting about the getting ready process, no publicising shopping for a wedding dress. The wedding would just happen. And for both me and my husband-to-be, it would entail less planning, less stress, and – frankly – less worrying about people other than ourselves. No expectations, no demands, no seating arrangements. Just us. We’d been a couple for over ten years, we didn’t need to make a big spectacle of our vows. We could do it our way.”
The bridal ballet flat
Heels, begone! The renaissance of the ballet flat was one of 2023’s most defining chapters, and in 2024, our turn towards a softer, more comfortable way of dressing doesn’t show any signs of slowing. Miu Miu’s strapped, ribbon-affixed pointe shoes, Alaïa’s mesh babies, The Row’s leather slippers along with French girl favourites Repetto and Carel: these were the designs spotted on feet far and wide.
It’s only now, though, that we’re seeing the ballet flat infiltrate the world of weddings. Actress and model Margaret Qualley sported a pearlescent pair of Mary Janes at her wedding to musician Jack Antonoff in August, shoes she paired with a halter neck Chanel dress and later, a Molly Goddard midi. Then, it was Allyson Shiffman, print editor of Vogue Scandinavia, in October, who coupled her corseted, Marie Antoinette-esque Dilara Fındıkoğlu gown with dainty Miu Miu flats.
You might recall that both Keira Knightley and Mandy Moore chose ballet flats for their nuptials in 2013 and 2018 respectively, but in 2024, we predict that the silhouette will become a much more sought-after option for brides. After all, you’re going to be shepherding guests, walking down the aisle, up the aisle and twirling on the dance floor until the early morning. Practicality calls for shoes that won’t hurt to move around in – and ballet flats, well, they have the added benefit of looking downright adorable as well. Look to brands like Loeffler Randall, Maison Margiela, The Row, Prada and Jimmy Choo, all of whom have a wide variety of styles on offer.
Film photography
Going hand-in-hand with the emergence of smaller, highly intimate wedding ceremonies is the rise of film photography. Retro camera tools have become quite the status item for Gen Z-ers and Millennials in the last year, a season which has seen younger generations reach for point-and-shoots, as well as invest in more analogue mediums of photography. It’s a sort of nostalgia that has also made its way into the bridal sphere, as couples explore film and Super 8 videography alongside, and oftentimes instead of digital photography.
“We were thinking about trying to do away with some of the preciousness that comes with weddings,” groom Taylor Dafoe told The New York Times. “Because of the restrictions of film, they would get fewer photographs in the end and have fewer opportunities to reshoot moments. We want the event to kind of revel in its own ephemerality. And choosing to shoot on film, that’s like a big part of that thinking — because of the material and financial limitations of film.”
The beauty of film, from the romance of its grained appearance to the patience required from the process itself, was a point reiterated by wedding photographer Anna Urban: “People are looking for something different. The whole process is different. You don’t see the effect until you have them scanned, developed. It’s like part of the magic, waiting for the photos.”
Another detail we’ve noticed at ceremonies of late, as an extension of this trend? Tables stacked high with disposable cameras that invite guests to snap photos throughout the night — an ingenious way to capture the ceremony in a candid, personal manner.
Throwback themes
It has been the wedding cake bringing a retro kitsch to the ceremonies of the last couple of years — Lambeth buttercream ruffles, pastel shades and glacé cherries galore — but in the coming bridal season, the itch for vintage will become all-encompassing. Sleek, ’90s-style civil weddings, jubilant ’80s-inspired colour, and a wash of ’70s bohemianism, present in florals, texture and location, are on the climb.
The normalisation of second-hand shopping has also meant that more brides are looking for vintage options when it comes to purchasing a wedding dress; on TikTok, archival silhouettes from designers like Vera Wang, as well as drop-waist designs from the ’40s and ’50s onwards, have been popularised. Sustainable and affordable — what’s not to love?
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