Wedding dresses

Hi Jennifer,

Are you talking about a Civil Marriage in the Cartório or a church wedding following the civil ceremony? For church weddings here in Brazil you must first be married in a civil ceremony since church weddings do no have the force of law, they are purely ceremonial here.

If you are talking about the civil ceremony traditionally a wedding gown per se is not used. The bride dresses in an evening gown usually and it can be of any color (except black I guess).

The true wedding gown is almost always used exclusively for the church weddings. You can find loads of shops that sell bridal attire in Rio simply by doing a Google search for "loja de noiva em rj".

If you are going to get married in the church here, don't be surprised by one major cultural difference. The "Wedding March" that we traditionally think of as being part of the Recessional (bride and groom leaving the church) is what is played in place of the Bridal March (Here Comes the Bride) which is more common for us when the bride walks down the aisle to start the wedding. Strange!

Cheers,
William James Woodward - Brazil Animator, Expat-blog Team

Hello wanweier2014,

This post is from February 2013, kind of old now.

Cheers
William James Woodward - Brazil & Canada Expert, Expat-blog Team
(*** yipee, post no 4000)