Wedding Lingerie

Choosing Your Wedding Lingerie

When you choose your wedding lingerie, you first have to answer a few questions for yourself:

• What is your dress like?

• Where will the wedding take place?

• When will the wedding be? (How long will you have to wear the lingerie, and is it extremely hot or cold out?)

• How comfortable is it to wear for hours on end?

Your Dress

Popular colors for wedding lingerie are nude and white. Sometimes there are blushing pink accents, but overall, it's suited for the traditional white and ivory gowns.

If your dress isn't going to be the traditional white or ivory, you can branch out and experiment with colors other than white for your wedding lingerie. If your dress is black, you probably won't want to go with white lingerie; opt for deeper colors or nudes instead.

Dress materials also come into play when you choose your wedding lingerie. You don't want to choose bulky underthings if your dress is thin, satiny and clingy enough to show every bump, curve and line.

Dresses heavy on beading and material are fine with figure-enhancing corsets and bustiers with boning and texture. If your dress is made of a thin material, opt for as few separates as possible to avoid unsightly lines. You may want to try Spanx or other single shaping items that cover large areas.

The Where and When

Time of day or night, and location of the wedding will play big parts in what you choose to wear under your dress. If it's a chilly night and you have the option, you may want to go with something a bit bulky that covers more skin than, say satin panties and a strapless bra.

If, however, you're having an afternoon wedding in the summer, you'll want to wear as little as possible under your dress to minimize discomfort. A strapless bra and satin panties may be just what you need.

Comfort Zones

There's nothing like seeing a bride at the altar readjusting her lingerie in front of a teary-eyed crowd. There's also nothing like trying to recite your vows while wondering if your lingerie straps are going to pop violently and blind your groom before ricocheting back to leave a big red welt on your forehead for your wedding photos. It's sort of distracting.

That means you need to know that what you're wearing will be comfortable--for hours on end. You'll be wearing your dress--and the lingerie, of course--for quite a bit of the day. You'll have picture before and after the ceremony, the ceremony itself and, unless you're one of those brides who cuts loose and leaves her dress behind in lieu of a pair of shorts and a tank for the reception, you'll be wearing your wedding lingerie at the after party, as well.

Before the big day, and in time to shop some more, make sure you try on your lingerie for more than the two minute period most of us do just to make sure something fits. Stretch in it. Sit down in it. Kneel in it, if there's going to be a point in your ceremony where you're asked to kneel. Make sure your straps stay up. If you don't have straps, make sure the bra or bustier will stay in place. Make sure those garter straps hold your thigh highs snugly in place when you move.

Make it Your Something New or Something Blue

When you're looking for the perfect wedding lingerie, you may want to incorporate the "something old, something new; something borrowed and something blue "phrase into it.

Make part of your bridal lingerie your something new or something blue, but you'll most likely want to skip the borrowed and old as far as your lingerie items are concerned. A blue thong is a fun way to liven up your wedding lingerie, and you may even already have one (Ha! You can use something old here).

Keep It or Toss It?

You toss your bouquet at throngs of single but hopeful women. Your new husband shoots the garter across his shoulder at a group of single men who may or may not admit to dodging it after the fact. But what about the wedding lingerie? Once it's served its purpose, do you keep it for old times' sake, or toss it, too? Can a bustier with so much boning in it really be used again? And who really wears white thigh highs?

Some parts of wedding lingerie are easy to reuse, especially if you wore Spanx or that old blue thong. If you went crazy with the shopping, though, and bought everything in frilly white, it can be more of a challenge to get any use out of it.

A couple of hints: Break it into pieces. Don't try to wear everything at once, but a bustier under a heavy sweater or boring button-up shirt can give you that, "I have a secret, and it's making me feel sexy" feeling. Wear the panties separately if you like.

You can even wear the thigh highs with the garter skirt you bought under your blue jeans and boots. Then surprise him later. Men are easily intoxicated by the sight of their woman wearing thigh highs. On that note, he'd surely like to see you all dressed up in the whole wedding lingerie set, if you ever feel like putting it all on again.

Where to Buy Lingerie

• Pampered Passions

• Victoria's Secret

• Frederick's of Hollywood

• Lingerie Gifts

• Yandy.com