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Top wedding trend 2026: The brides have gone goth
These are the calling cards of the modern bride: flower arrangements that spill artfully out of their assigned vessels, stems of dark calla lilies (maroon-red, the closer to black, the better) and a dress with a hint of the ethereal, the moody, the witchy.
It’s a notable shift from the light, sparsely populated table settings and clean, spaghetti strap gowns that signalled an it-girl’s wedding over the last decade or so. Searches on Pinterest are up 240 per cent for “unique wedding dresses”, while black wedding dresses are up 50 per cent.
No longer is the brief simple, effortless, just-rolled-out-of-bed-and-into-my-wedding. Brides want something different, something edgier, something with (more than) a hint of drama. All those portents of the clean girl’s death may be true after all.
Say goodbye to the traditional bride
Stas Moiseev
The rise of the gothic trend
In November, Stella Banderas Griffith took to a 12-century Spanish stone abbey to marry, in an off-the-shoulder Rodarte gown. Her bridesmaids, including her sister Dakota Johnson, held dark red calla lilies against their black, high-necked lace gowns.
The vision? Dark glamour, framed perfectly by the abbey cloisters. It was pure romance, and high drama – and not as the bridal magazines of old imagined it. She’s not alone. Maybe she took inspiration from Anya Taylor-Joy’s wedding – though it was two years after the fact that the actress revealed she secretly married Malcom McRae in New Orleans, in a gothic ceremony complete with “anatomically correct” cakes shaped like human hearts.
Elsewhere, photographer Harley Weir recently called on London-based designer Dilara Findikoglu to fashion her a dress fit for a wedding beneath the turrets and spires of Lismore Castle. They settled on Look 26 from the Turkish designer’s autumn/winter 2023 collection as the starting point, and iterated on it with, as the bride described it to Vogue, “bits and bobs” from Etsy – a bricolage approach that felt pointedly anti-bridal-industrial-complex.
But Tish Weinstock, a self-styled goth, had a darkly glamorous wedding well before it was trending (the beauty editor wrote a book in 2024 called How to Be a Goth, so she is an unsurprising forebear of the trend).
Kate Moss donned vampire teeth and plugged into an IV drip to celebrate her friend’s nuptials at Belvoir Castle all the way back in 2023, while Weinstock herself wore a custom ceremony gown by Notting Hill’s Jane Bourvis, a ‘30s-style veil, and walked into a room full of guests dressed to the tune of ‘black tie gothic’.
Tish Weinstock also opted to go goth for her wedding in 2023
Sarah Brick
“It’s basically based on Morticia Addams, who is my style icon, obviously!” she told British Vogue of her look. “Morticia, but make it bridal.”
Moving away from minimalism
“Minimalism never felt like a moment we were responding to, so we haven’t noticed a clear move away from it either,” Trinh and Philips told the London Standard. “What we do notice is that brides are less interested in fitting into a visual category and more interested in how something makes them feel, and in expressing that in their own way.”
Lintang Wandita Dewantari, a creative director based in Florence, certainly went for a definitive statement of self. She eschewed the expected white and married her now-husband in a black, witchy Noir Kei Ninomiya two piece.
Lintang Wandita Dewantari proves white is no longer for your wedding
Stas Moiseev
“Styling the outfit was definitely my favorite part,” she says. “I wanted to feel powerful, sharp, and elegant for City Hall, so I paired a leather jacket featuring intertwined eco-leather strings with a tutu skirt.” Her boots? Balenciaga, naturally. Dark, decadent, a little unholy. “It was always my dream to have a winter wedding in black.”
