This Was the Most Inclusive Bridal Fashion Week Ever

Diversity in both the fashion and the wedding industries has been a hot topic for several years now. Yet, every Bridal Fashion Week, we tend to see cisgender, caucasian, able-bodied, female-identifying, thin models walk the runway in wedding dresses. But this season was different. Most collections featured a plus-size model and models of different races, Theia showcased a model who uses a wheelchair in his runway show (see below for designer Don O'Neil's emotional moment after he bid her down the runway), David's Bridal used actual soonlyweds and newlyweds to model their collection, and we saw our first open transgender model in Galia Lahav‘s Fall 2020 campaign.

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Many women inspired this moment in today’s @theiacouture show .. Frida Kahlo was one, but more importantly the beautiful Julie Helen from County Cork, whom I have known since she was a baby , was diagnosed with Cerebral Palsy at 18 months old , a smart super Intelligent woman working at Inclusion Ireland, radiant in a THEIA gown on her wedding day in 2016 had encouraged me to take inclusivity a step further .. we discovered the gorgeous model @briscalesse who embodied the Goddess THEIA today in her first ever runway show.. a pure radiant light , the star of the show .. @jacquidavishair captured this moment as Bri made her first exit , beaming the brightest smile heading out in her first fashion show to Coldplay’s “Fly On” .. .. we had given Bri wings and watched her Fly ……….

A post shared by Don O'Neill (@dononeilldesign) on Oct 3, 2019 at 8:58pm PDT

And these inclusive efforts are seen and appreciated. By media, by buyers and, most importantly, by real-life soonlyweds. People want to see themselves in the wedding content that they consume. The road to complete inclusivity is a journey. I'd like to not hear applause just because a model is plus-size, because having plus-size options is simply the norm; and see a male-identifying model rock a wedding dress down the runway because why not? I've seen plenty of male-identifying individuals want to feel “bridal.” But we have to start somewhere, right? And this is a damn good start.