The bride wore....

... very little.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/21/fashion/21brides.html?ref=fashion&pagewanted=all
I know I am not the only person in Church work to have noticed and decried the increasingly exhibitionist bridal garments that grace the aisle. (At our parish, it sometimes looks as if, the girls, over-zealous to avoid the tardiness that they are so warned about, choose the lesser of two evils and show up en dishabille...)
The New York Times fashion pages comments on this phenomenon here, (needless to say, in the Wolrd of the Commentable, things are much further along than in my pocket of the world,) though not surprisingly, they do not look on the trend with the same jaundiced eye as I.
They do however nail one of the principle reasons, without taking the next step and mentioning the natural consequences of this trend.
"Today the prevailing fantasy is no longer, ‘I want to be a princess in my ball gown,’ ... A lot of women have done that already for their prom.”
Back it up a few years, buddy.
Today they've already done it for their their Quince. Or their Middle School graduation. Or their confirmation. Or their elementary school graduation. Or their 9th birthday party. Or their First Communion. Or their...
Yes, it keeps escalating, or whatever the opposite of escalating is, sinking, they dress like princesses as small children, they need to step it up and dress like brides when barely older, like vamps soon after that and like prostitutes by the time they are ready to "settle down."
It is all part and parcel with the sexualization of children and the infantilization of adults, and the vicious circle is swirling so fast that one can't distiguish cause from effect.