Virilen Wedding Dress
Manufacturing process
The process to weave wedding gown material, sew the dress, and embroider designs on the skirt can take as long as a year, depending on the number and skill of the bride's female relatives. This time brings the group closer in community, as they exchange stories and the older women pass down advice to the bride and other younger relatives.
Significance
Wedding dresses in Virilia are a blend of silver, blue, and green (representing positive change, purity, and luck, respectively). They're also commonly embroidered with esteria and sakuna blossoms, as tribute to Gossalu and Thiumea.
Wedding gowns also represent the love of a bride's community, since the material is uniquely woven alongside her female relatives and close female friends and the dress is embroidered with symbols of their hopes for the bride and her marriage. If a bride's relative is a weaver trained in textile magics, the relative might infuse her embroidery with some sort of magical blessing as well (peace, fertility, order for the home, etc.).
Item type
Clothing / Accessory
Rarity
Each wedding dress is unique, but wedding dresses in general are as common as brides.
Raw materials & Components
Virilen wedding gowns are woven of blue and green silk and silver dragon scale thread. These materials are produced in Upper Virilia, so it's an exciting (and sometimes stressful) part of the preparation process for the bride and her attendants to travel to an Upper city to select the threads. Brides who want extra sparkle might add beading to their dresses, as well.
Tools
Wedding gown material is hand-woven on a loom, and dresses are hand-sewn and hand-embroidered (and sometimes hand-beaded) with bone needles.
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Nice article, this sounds like an interesting custom :D "the dress is embroidered with their hopes for the bride and her marriage." Do you mean magical, symbolically or literally with specific symbols? " dragon scale thread" how do they make the thread from the scales?
Thank you! Oops, I meant to specify "symbols of their hopes." Thank you for asking! Dragon scales are melted down and then spread over a flat surface to cool, after which they're sliced into long strips to be used as thread, similarly to actual silver or gold thread.