The most expensive clothing item for women has gone mass market

For epochs, women have spent tons of money on their wedding dresses — and they still do.
According to The Knot's most recent Real Wedding Study, the average wedding dress costs $1,357 — but given the wide disparity between of overall wedding costs (a Manhattan wedding is an average $76,328 and a Utah wedding is an average $15,257), it's likely that there are plenty of brides out there forking over upwards of $2000 on their dresses.

But why do brides spend this much money on dresses that will only be worn once?

This is a divisive question, as some brides will loudly protest that this is the most important day of their lives, that they will proceed to look back on the photographs for eternities upon eternities, and would prefer something that fits like a glove and lets them sparkle in ways that nothing else could.

"It's not just a white dress," wedding dress designer Anne Barge said to NPR.  "It's the fabric, and it's the workmanship, and it's the lining, and it's the fit."

"It's the dress of your life, and if there is ever one picture your [descendants] have of you it's the one in your wedding dress," Barge explained.

Additionally, NPR suggested that going all-out indicated total commitment. Go big, or go home.

Still, other brides deplore the wedding industrial complex, and others are on strict budgets.

But somewhere in between appealing to the defiant bride who doesn't want to fork over thousands of dollars and the highly profitable wedding industry, mass market retailers are selling wedding dresses.

J. Crew hopped on the wedding band in 2004, paving the way for other mass retailers to do the same. Most of the dresses are sold online or in the catalog. The retailer had a boutique on Madison Avenue Manhattan, but now its bridal sales are limited to a bridal salon in its Flatiron location. J.  Crew sells a variety of wedding styles — even jumpsuits.

Jennifer Aniston even reportedly wore a wedding veil from J. Crew, according to Us Weekly.

Ann Taylor has sent brides down the aisle, as well. Ann Taylor dresses are even more modestly priced than J. Crew's — all are under $1,000, many are under $500, and some are under $250.

Even Target has forayed into the wedding industry with its line Tevolio. A wedding dress at Target costs just $52.48.

Anthropologie has a bridal offshoot called BHLDN — but the dresses run on the pricier side, compared to other mass retailers. However, shopping at BHLDN — while potentially comparable price-wise to buying a dress at a boutique — offers stressed-out brides the ease of purchasing the dresses online, as does buying a dress online from any of the aforementioned retailers.

That ideology is behind many of these mass retailer's bridal lines.

"Certainly as women—who are working and living very full lives—are planning a wedding, they're interested in shopping online," Christine Beauchamp, former president of Ann Taylor, said to The Wall Street Journal in 2010.

Wedding experts agree. "Especially for girls in a hurry,  it’s really great because the majority of J. Crew [wedding dresses] is online and in the catalogs," Anne Chertoff, WeddingWire's trend expert, said to Business Insider.

"It's really great and really easy," she added.

And mass market dresses tend to evoke the sentiment of a relaxed bride (which not all brides can confess to be).

But the real heart of the matter is not the dress is mass market, but that there are problems that come with purchasing a wedding dress online.

Chertoff says she encourages brides to go to stores to try dresses on, at the very least.

"I usually encourage people to have that experience even if they're on a budget, you know, if there’s a J. Crew store in their area that sells bridal dresses, if there’s BHLDN [which has bridal boutiques in select markets], or even if it’s David’s Bridal, I think it’s really important that people — if this dress is something that has somewhat of a significance to them — go to a store and try it on," she said. "It’s not like trying a dress that you would wear to work. Bridal sizing is very different." Brides thereby forego receiving experts' advice, she explained, including on how alterations might work.

And it's less emotional.

"By ordering from a catalog, you miss out on that moment and that experience — especially if your mom's still around," she said. "That moment on the television shows — 'Say Yes to The Dress' — even when the cameras aren’t rolling on every single bride, that happens You’re twirling in it! You'll never want to take it off! You'll be beaming in it! ... It's something you'll never forget."

And places like Kleinfeld's specialize in dress for every kind of bride — including the modest bride, as Racked reported — which is something that a mass market retailer may struggle to provide.

Still, budget-minded Learnvest advises cash-strapped brides to look to mass market retailers as a way to save on cash. But Chertoff warns that a traditional retailer's wedding dress might not be so cheap. A J. Crew wedding dress can be $650 — or it can be $2,200. Chertoff advises that brides can pick up discounted designer dresses at David's Bridal without foregoing the experience.

That said, Chertoff concedes, "[buying a dress online is] a really easy way to do it — especially if the dress isn’t the most important thing."

How to Wear Those Barely There Wedding Dresses

When it comes to a wedding dress, how little is too much?

On the bridal catwalks for fall 2016, transparency wound its way from necklines and sleeves to the sides, fronts and backs of gowns. Some dresses were almost entirely transparent. Those choosing to wear one of these more risqué designs will have to plan carefully.

This injection of sexy on the catwalks may reflect today’s more open-minded approach to the institution of marriage.

Naeem Khan said he started designing dresses last season that appear to bare more flesh in response to requests from brides for designs that showcased their figures rather than their innocence.

His new collection had gowns of embroidery covering sheer, skin-colored fabric. “It’s a bride’s biggest red-carpet moment,” he said, “and you should be looking like a billion dollars.”

Around half the brides who buy the designer Pnina Tornai’s dramatic gowns with illusion bodices ask for opaque nude-colored panels of fabric to be inserted into the bodice, according to Terry Hall, fashion director at Kleinfeld Bridal in New York. This gives them the same sleek look without showing as much skin, Mr. Hall said. And in doing so, it helps appease more tradition-minded parents and other relatives.

Similarly, Don O’Neill, whose 1920s-opium-den-inspired collection for Theia was one of the season’s most provocative shows, suggests that if the bride doesn’t want to bare all, she can add a nude organza layer, a silk georgette lining or a bodysuit under his more transparent dresses.

As they prepare for their glamour moment, many brides appear to be taking their cues directly from the red carpet.

Although Kristin DeJohn, 32, said she was “going for glamorous right off the bat” — having been inspired by the sleek chic of Jennifer Lopez’s red-carpet style — she ended up with two dresses for her marriage in September last year.

For the couple’s Greek Orthodox ceremony in Greenlawn, N.Y., she wore a more traditional gown with flowing fabric by J. Mendel. But for the Catholic marriage blessing ceremony two days later, at Oheka Castle in Huntington, N.Y., she wore a heavily beaded dress by the Israeli designer Lihi Hod. She liked its plunging back, with matching low-cut front, sheer panels and semitransparent arms. She said it felt natural to wear the racier number for the second ceremony.

Sarah Dihmes, 32, tried on almost 100 wedding dresses before her September 2014 wedding on the Amalfi Coast in Italy. “I wanted something sexy to show off my curves,” she said. “It feels very conservative to be all in white.”

She admired the way Israeli designers incorporated nude-colored fabric into their designs, and fell in love with a strapless Mira Zwillinger dress, which fell to an inch above her knees and had nude fabric peeking out from heavy lace and flowers.

But in the end, she decided she wanted something more conventional for the ceremony after all. “I wasn’t sure if I wanted that sexy of a dress in a picture that would last forever, that my grandchildren would be seeing,” she said. So she wore that Zwillinger dress to the rehearsal dinner and a less revealing Ines Di Santo gown with a mermaid cut for the wedding.

Another option for adding modesty to a dress with transparent sections is donning a long veil for the ceremony and removing it for the reception, said Julie Sabatino from the Stylish Bride, a wedding fashion stylist in New York. In a nod to the popularity of bridal dresses with detachable skirts, she also suggested having an overskirt in tulle or silk organza made as an addition to dresses dominated by transparency.

Nevertheless, even in the face of this zest for skin-hugging, barely there fabrics, full voluminous skirts were seen in collections by Marchesa and Naeem Khan.

“They can exist alongside each other,” said Mark Ingram of Mark Ingram Atelier. “Now you have the option to be the angel or the devil.”

Sofia Vergara Chose a Wedding Dress By Designer Zuhair Murad for Joe Manganiello Nuptials

Sofia Vergara, who's set to marry Joe Manganiello in November, chose Zuhair Murad for her wedding dress designer
Credit: John Shearer/WireImage
Here comes the bride! Beirut-born designer Zuhair Murad has outfitted Modern Family actress Sofía Vergara for Oscar and Golden Globe bashes. Now, in the new issue of Us Weekly, a Vergara source says the star has entrusted the couturier with the most important party dress of all: her wedding gown!

PHOTOS: The best celeb wedding dresses

Vergara, 43, will wear a custom-made, fairy-tale frock to wed fiancé Joe Manganiello on Nov. 22 at the Breakers Resort in Palm Beach, Fla. The duo has been engaged since the Magic Mike XXL hunk popped the question in Hawaii last December — even reciting his proposal speech to the Colombian-born beauty in Spanish.

PHOTOS: Sofia and Joe's sexiest PDA

One of the couple’s first wedding-planning challenges was narrowing down the guest list. Vergara told Jimmy Kimmel on Sept. 14 that the guest list number is around 400, joking, “200 are, like, my family.”

The pair recently sent out luxurious 8-by-8-inch invitations for the affair. “They’re classy and white,” says the source. “It cost around $7 to mail each one!” Guests will be treated to a Saturday night cocktail reception, followed by the couple's vows on Sunday, planned by celebrity wedding consultant Mindy Weiss.

PHOTOS: Joe Manganiello's hottest shirtless shots

Among the guests will be the bride-to-be’s Modern Family costars, including Julie Bowen, who told Us Sept. 18 that Manganiello, 38, is “like a caveman” with Vergara. “It’s sexy! I love it,” she said. "She’s so strong, and so [used to] calling the shots all the time, and then you see them together and there’s a part of her that kind of melts. It just warms your heart when you see that, because it’s not all the time that you can tell that there’s an aspect to this relationship that’s very -- how shall we say? -- primal.”

PHOTOS: Wedding dresses from TV and film

While Vergara told Martha Stewart Weddings that there will be a “special” cake table with “a big wedding cake and lots of desserts,” there won’t be a gift table: According to the insider, the couple have requested donations to Vergara’s beloved St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. And as for pre-wedding jitters? There are none, the source says: “Sofia isn’t nervous at all. She can’t wait to walk down the aisle and be with him forever.”