Recently, the wedding dresses of two pending costume dramas caught my attention: #Yang Chaoyue & Love You Seven Times, and #Bai Lu & Till The End of The Moon respectively.
Just as marriage is used as a weight to measure love in modern dramas, costume dramas have long been adept at using weddings to move the plot forward. Wedding dresses are becoming more and more common in costume dramas, and once a drama has a wedding sequence, then the actors' level of makeup creation will reach a state of luxury peak. Whether it is a lover who finally gets married, or a tragedy caused by a wrong marriage, it can add a lot to the drama.
For example, Yang Chaoyue's look, wearing a lot of gold jewelry, beads and velvet flowers as decoration. Perhaps because the show is not set in a specific dynastic context, the makeup artist has more flexible styling ideas. The black and red eyeliner shapes, form a color collision, and the gold eye shadow of the upper eyelid is also quite smart.
Bai Lu's wedding dress look is the favorite line of the ancient costume drama in the past two years. The tulle red wedding dress and bridal veil, with red frontal ornaments, has a more exotic feel, matching the fantasy colors of this drama.
In "One and Only", Bai Lu's wedding look is also outstanding, black hair bun with gold hair ornaments, looks more dignified. Light fine eyebrows with light pink eyeshadow are very flattering. The lips are brightly colored but not painted all over. Slender eyebrows and small lips are the right matches for the modern assessment of ancient beauty.
Wedding dresses have become more and more sophisticated in recent years and continue to bring pleasing looks to the audience. But if we rewind the time to twenty years ago, would we be able to see such a wedding dress look in a costume drama?
Wedding Dresses in Costume Dramas 1.0
At the beginning of the millennium, costume dramas began to jump out from serious literary adaptations, and "Palace of Desire" is an example. This drama also achieved extreme romance and gaudiness, showing the glorious weather of the Sheng Tang period.
The most impressive part of the drama is the ridiculous wedding of Princess Taiping. Chen Hong, who plays the adult Taiping, has a natural beauty of opulence, dignity, and grace, with an aura that does not match her age.
In the drama, her make-up was special when she married Xue Shao, with the tips of her eyebrows slightly downward, but the curvature at the end of her eyebrows subtly raised. The makeup is also inspired by the popular Huahuang makeup, the forehead, eye corners, mouth corners were apply with the yellow, match with cherry lips, dynamic and elegant.
Taiping's jewelry is simple, but it is also considered extravagant. The delicate lines of the gold jewelry and the meticulous makeup echoed each other, showing her beauty to the maximum extent. Most of Chen Hong's official stills back then were also taken with this look.
And the two sets of wedding dress look in "Wrong Carriage, Right Groom" is a more common touch.
The meeting of Li Yuhu and Du Bingyan appears in the first episode. Although both are wearing wedding dresses, from the makeup and hairstyle, it is easy to distinguish which is the young girl of a wealthy family and which is the ordinary girl who grew up practicing martial arts.
The character of Li Yuhu, played by Huang Yi, is straightforward, smart and mischievous. Even when the wedding, but also refused to wear more jewelry, just pin a few velvet flowers, a tassel hairpin. The hair bun also did not make a serious effort, two strands of hair hanging down and braids on the head, all confirmed her character from the side.
Du Bing Yan, played by Li Jia Lin, is stable and dignified. The headdress is gorgeous, and the makeup is a bit more cumbersome, just the number of layers of eye shadow staining is a lot more than Li Yuhu.
Wedding Dresses in Costume Dramas 2.0
Starting from "Ripening Orange", the pursuit of wedding costumes in dramas has changed direction.
"Ripening Orange" is a tragic love story. Xiu He (秀禾), played by Zhou Xun, can be seen as the epitome of a feudal-era woman.
At the most beautiful age of her life, she can only marry into the Rong family as a tool continue the family line and as a concubine. Unexpectedly, Groom's cousin Rong Yaohui takes his place as the groom and falls in love with Xiu He.
The costumes of the women of the Rong family in the drama are extremely elaborate and fully in line with the costume tradition of the late Qing Dynasty, leaving a deep impression on the audience. The modified version of the Qing Dynasty folk wedding dress wear by Zhou Xun has also been given the name "Xiuhe Fu (秀禾服)" since then.
In "Ripening Orange", Zhou Xun wore a low bun with short bangs on her forehead, which was a very fashionable hairstyle in the late Qing Dynasty. In addition, a variety of other hairstyles suitable for with the Xiuhe Fu, she also make full demonstrated in the drama.
After the broadcast of "Ripening Orange", the Xiuhe Fu became popular and several female celebrities chose the this traditional dress in their weddings. It became the wish of many girls to have a Chinese wedding and wear Xiuhe Fu.
Not only Xiuhe Fu, but also the finely stitched Long Feng Gua (龙凤褂) received a lot of attention. Although they are all wedding dresses, they are very different in silhouette and craftsmanship.
Xiuhe Fu used Chao embroidery, in addition to dragon and phoenix, there are also peony, flower branch, pomegranate and other patterns, symbolizing different wishes, mostly slant-breasted tops with a horse-face skirt.
Long Feng Gua are mainly three-dimensional Bu Xin embroidery, the pattern is relatively single. According to the embroidery area in order from less to more, there are five types. The matching of the lapel top and straight skirt can highlight the slim and slender figure.
Wedding Dresses in Costume Dramas 3.0
After 2010, the ancient costume drama wedding dresses mainly revolve around two different types, one with the exact historical dynasty as the background, the other one leaning towards the fantasy style.
For example, "The Story of Ming Lan" is set in the Song dynasty. In the drama, several daughters of Yangzhou General Judge Sheng Hong are got married one after another, and the wedding specifications can be seen from the styling of the wedding dress.
According to historical records, the wedding dresses of the Tang Dynasty were red and green. This was also the case in the Song Dynasty, the groom's dress was mainly red and the bride was dressed in green. And in the Song Dynasty, women could wear a phoenix crown on their wedding day, which was also a gorgeous extravagance unique to that era.
Compared to Mo Lan, Ming Lan's wedding dress is more gorgeous, which also reflects the importance that the Sheng family attaches to Ming Lan's wedding. With complicated dresses, makeup is supposed to pursue simplicity, thick eyebrows, red lips, and dark eye makeup, emphasizing the smoothness and atmosphere of the face.
While the wedding dresses in "Three Lives, Three Worlds, The Pillow Book" is a common style in fantasy dramas in the past two years. Without an era setting, no mundane life trivia, in which people, gods, and demons coexist.
Bai Qian's wedding styling, wearing silver jewelry, a white wedding dress, with tassels slightly covered face, whether the jewelry carving or light-colored embroidery on the wedding dress, can highlight her precious identity.
In the recent drama "The Imperial Age" and "The Blue Whisper", two different wedding dress styles are presented, too.
Traditional wedding dresses based on hanfu are an inheritance of traditional culture. And the fantasy style wedding dresses not only add highlights to the whole drama, but also are the development and innovation of traditional Chinese wedding dresses. As the richness of the drama subjects, the costumes have not been left behind and are being gradually iterated and updated.
Which wedding dresses in costume dramas do you prefer? Share with me in the comment section.
Amazing!😍
Very beautiful
Wow beautifull