The Tattooed Bride

Many women from all walks of life today are getting tattoos. What might be a fun piece of body art in your daily life can be a bit tricky to deal with when you are shopping for a wedding gown. Here are a few options to consider for the tattooed bride.

At the time of their wedding, brides can have a wide range of feelings about their tattoos. Some women love them, and want to find a way to showcase them. Other brides like their tattoos, but don't want them to show for the wedding. And some women have tattoos that they got a long time ago and now regret. And then there is the matter of the bride's mother. No matter how comfortable the bride is showing her ink on the wedding day, her mother may have another opinion!

One bride I knew had a wide tribal tattoo around her wrist, and another tattoo on the back of her neck. She loved her tattoos, but her mother most certainly did not. When the bride's mother called to make an appointment for her to pick out a wedding dress, she had said that her daughter was very conservative, and was looking for a dress with long sleeves and a high collar - then in walks this gal with short spiky hair and big tattoos! It turns out that the bride was not the least bit conservative; her mother had decided that since she was paying for the wedding gown, it had darn well better hide those tattoos!

Well, you can't expect a funky rocker chic to walk down the aisle in a Victorian gown, but in this case, a compromise was reached between the two sides. The bride wore a gown with a removable jacket with a tattoo concealing collar for the ceremony, which she could remove for dancing and having fun at the reception. To conceal her wrist tattoo, no long sleeves were necessary; instead she ordered a piece of custom bridal jewelry to do the trick. Her bridal jewelry was a custom made wide bracelet, with enough rows of pearls and crystals to hide the tattoo for the ceremony. The best part was that the bracelet looked fabulous on her wedding day, and both the bride and her mother were happy.

If you have smaller tattoos that you want to hide for your wedding day, sometimes you can do it with makeup. There is special makeup available that can be custom blended to cover a tattoo. Just be sure that it is not going to rub off on your white dress. Some brides even opt for laser removal of tattoos before their wedding. If you are thinking about going this route, keep in mind that it takes multiple sessions, so you should start a very long time before your wedding.

Not all brides want to hide their body art on their wedding day. If you want to show off your tattoos, then be sure to choose a gown that does them justice. It looks terrible to have a tattoo partially cut off by a dress strap; if you are going to show your tattoo, make sure that your dress is cut to reveal the entire area. I once knew a bride who had a giant pair of wings tattooed on her back. After realizing that no gown would cover them completely, she decided to wear a dress with a low enough back to really feature the wings. It was the perfect solution for this bride, because her tattoos were really a part of her personality, and it was nice not to hide who she was.

There are a variety of creative options for brides when it comes to dealing with tattoos. Whether you prefer to hide them or showcase them is entirely up to you (and maybe your mother!). Just be sure that if you have been hiding your body art from your parents that you don't let your wedding day be the first time that they find out about it.