The best unconventional celebrity wedding dresses

6 November 2014
By Fashion Quarterly

See the celebrity brides who shunned tradition for their weddings.

unconventional celebrity wedding dresses
Photo / Getty Images

Bianca Jagger shunned a traditional dress in favour of a YSL Le Smoking jacket when she married Rolling Stones frontman Mick Jagger in 1971.

unconventional celebrity wedding dresses
Photo / Instagram @poppydelevingne

Poppy Delevingne wore a floral Emilio Pucci gown for her second wedding to James Cook; for the first ceremony she wore a long Chanel dress that could be shortened into a mini.

unconventional celebrity wedding dresses
Photo / Getty Images

The fur-collared suit Marilyn Monroe wore to marry American baseball star Joe DiMaggio in 1954 was no doubt an understated choice. But come the release of The Seven Year Itch the following year, she would have her white dress moment and then some.

unconventional celebrity wedding dresses
Photo / ManRepeller.com

In true Man Repeller style, blogger Leandra Medine added flair to her traditional Marchesa gown with a custom-made Rebecca Minkoff white biker jacket.

Photo/Getty Images
Photo / Getty Images

It isn’t your conventional wedding dress, but she wasn’t your conventional woman.  Elizabeth Taylor wore this yellow number when she married her fifth husband Richard Burton for the first time in 1964. The couple divorced in 1974 and then remarried in 1975. They divorced again and Liz was married a further two times before her death in 2011, bringing the husband count to a grand total of seven, and the wedding count to eight.

olivia-palermo
Photo / OliviaPalermo.com

Immaculately turned out at fashion shows and red carpet events on a weekly basis, Olivia Palermo cannot put a foot wrong in the style stakes. But this doesn’t mean she can’t still surprise us—case in point, the ensemble she wore to marry Johannes Huebl in 2014, which consisted of a cashmere sweater, white shorts and a full tulle skirt, all designed by Carolina Herrera.

audrey
Photo / Getty Images

We know that Hubert de Givenchy dressed Audrey Hepburn for most of her working life, but it was Pierre Balmain who designed the dress that the actress wore to marry first husband, Mel Ferrer, in 1954. Givenchy, whom she had only met that year, would go on to design her second wedding dress.

angelina
Photo / People

While Angelina Jolie’s Atelier Versace gown was about as traditional as they come, the actress can definitely be said to have coloured outside the lines when it came to her veil, which was decorated with drawings by her six children.

kate-moss
Photo / Getty Images

It doesn’t justify her behaviour on that recent EasyJet flight, but Kate Moss looked anything but basic in the sheer John Galliano dress she wore to marry Jamie Hince in 2011.

sofia
Photo / Getty Images

Her films are always costumed to perfection, so while the colour (purple) and length (mini) of Sofia Coppola’s Azzedine Alaïa wedding dress was unexpected, its chicness certainly wasn’t.

SolangeKnowles
Photo / Getty Images

With Beyoncé for a big sister, a lesser woman might shrink into the shadows. But Solange Knowles has always danced to the beat of her own drum, and never more so than when husband Alan Ferguson put a ring on it and she wore this amazing off-white jumpsuit-plus-cape situation.

KeiraKnightley
Photo / usmagazine.com

For her May 2013 wedding to James Righton of Klaxons fame, Keira Knightley went low key (relatively speaking) in Chanel SS06 couture, which she matched with a Chanel boucle jacket and ballet flats. Sourced from her own wardrobe and then repurposed for a red carpet event six months post-wedding, the dress was the gift that kept on giving—until it was recently written-off by a rogue glass of red wine. About this, Keira is surprisingly philosophical. “It’s quite impressively splattered. But, hey, a good night is a good night and when a dress has had its time, maybe it’s had its time”.

Photo / Getty Images
Photo / Getty Images

Gwen Stefani sings about a Galliano gown in her 2004 hit, Rich Girl. We can’t help but think she’s referencing the custom ombre John Galliano for Christian Dior gown that she wore to marry Gavin Rossdale in 2002.

CherylFernadezVersini
Jet black with a velvet bodice and a sheer chiffon skirt, Cheryl Fernandez-Versini’s sexy Ralph & Russo wedding gown had little in common with the poufy, princessy affair she wore to marry professional footballer Ashley Cole in 2006. We applaud the upgrade(s).

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Photo / Instagram @maisonvalentino

Perhaps hoping to keep comparisons to her husband’s late grandmother to a minimum (totes a normal consideration for a bride), Beatrice Borromeo married Monaco royal and Grandson of Grace Kelly, Pierre Casiraghi, in pale pink and gold lace Valentino couture.

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