If there’s one picture I’ve been obsessed with lately, it’s this press photo from 1997’s Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Cinderella, starring Brandy, Whitney Houston, Whoopi Goldberg, Bernadette Peters and Paolo Montalban as Prince Christopher (aka “Prince Charming,” the only way we’ve ever identified the character in Disney’s 1950s animated version).
I love how candid it looks (especially since some versions of it online clearly show a Fujifilm border). It could very well be a great candid shot—something about its energy seems highly off-the-cuff, and usually it’s the off-the-cuff pictures that turn out looking the best. The picture captures what could have been a random moment after Cinderella and Christopher’s wedding (even though she didn’t actually get married in the iconic blue dress in the film). The energy of it makes it one of my favorite pictures ever, not to mention one of my favorite pictures from the amount of PR photos I’ve seen.
It knocked this one down to number two, and this one is actually showcasing the actual wedding scene:
But like the picture above it, this one captures the feeling we’re told to expect from a wedding–pure happiness. I’m sure little girls of color all around the country imagined a wedding day that looked as magical as the one Cinderella and Christopher had, and certainly I’m sure many (like me) were hoping they’d be able to find a Prince Christopher of their own. I’m not even big into the showiness of weddings, but even I have found myself wondering what a huge Cinderella-esque wedding would be like. Not to mention, the film just celebrated its 20th anniversary. Thus, this post was born.
This post doesn’t have to be all about weddings—this post could be very useful for other big events in your life in which you need an elaborate ballgown (like prom, a Quinceañera, a huge cosplay event, etc.). But, if you’re a person who wants to go all out for your wedding or a fancy reception party, then maybe my suggestions could help you out. I’ve scoured the interwebs to find the perfect Cinderella dress and Prince Charming/Christopher suit, accessories and decorations, and even invitations.
Keep in mind: I’m no wedding planner, but I am an artist, and that counts for something. Please feel free to alter my suggestions for a Cinderella-themed wedding how you see fit. This is your big day, after all—I’m just offering my two cents.
(Note: This post isn’t intended just for heterosexual couples; whoever’s getting married can use this and have fun.)
Dressing as Cinderella
First of all, if you are a seamstress or know someone with wild tailoring/sewing skills, you could have someone custom-make this dress for you. With some of the options I’m about to show you, it might cost just as much (or maybe a little less) to have someone to make this dress for you. As you can probably already surmise, there’s no completely identical dress like this on the market.
HOWEVER, that doesn’t mean that there aren’t some pretty close dresses online. There are three ways you can go about doing this–get a Quinceañera dress or ballgown of some type, try Etsy, or find a white wedding dress of a similar style and pay extra to have the store dye it ice blue.
Option 1: Quinceañera dress
If you are as lithe in figure as Brandy, you might be able to get away with getting a Quinceañera dress to serve as your fanciful wedding dress. Yes, Quinceañera dresses are usually made for 15-year-old girls. But, because it’s for the day they finally reach womanhood, these dresses are made exactly the same as lavish ballgowns, but are much easier to find and purchase. But, like lavish ballgowns, they cost an extremely pretty penny.
The brand of Quinceañera dress that I’ve found several types of dresses can could work for a Cinderella themed wedding is Vizcaya by Morilee, an imprint of designer Madeline Gardner’s Morilee brand of wedding, evening, and party dresses. These dresses are the most opulent Quinceañera dresses I’ve seen during my search, and they are also the most mature looking. If you didn’t tell anyone this line was actually made for 15-year-olds, people would believe these were regular ballgowns, meaning that no one will be looking at you like you’re wearing a teenager’s dress on your wedding day.
This one is by far the closest I’ve seen to Brandy’s actual blue dress:
There are some extra straps, but it’s got everything you could ask for if you’re looking for a dress similar to Brandy’s blue dress. If you’re handy with tailoring, you might even be able to snip those straps away or hide them within the off-the-shoulder straps.
Some other good choices from Morilee:
I didn’t check the sizes for any of the Quinceañera dresses, so I’m only assuming you have to be skinny teenage-size to be able to wear these. There could be plus sizes for these, but you’ll have to check.
Option 2: Actual wedding dresses
In the event there aren’t, I found some real wedding dresses that are good for both smaller and plus size women. You can certainly dye these dresses ice blue (or pay someone to if you’re not into DIY with such an expensive dress), or you could just wear it as-is, which would be just like Cinderella on her wedding day in the film.
These designs are by Oleg Cassini, and they capture everything you want in both Cinderella’s ball gown and wedding dress.
Links: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 (some links are for sale prices)
These two are by Morilee, the same designer as the Vizcaya Quinceañera dresses.
With the ready-made items out of the way, let’s talk about Etsy. One shop, ieie bridal, makes gorgeous, made-to-order dresses. All you have to do is offer your measurements. These three in particular are great for Cinderellas-at-heart, especially the first one, which is a copy of the dress found in the recent Cinderella live action movie starring Lily James.
Option 3: Etsy
If you’re down with Etsy, I think it’d be worth inquiring if the middle dress could be made in an ice-blue fabric. I don’t know what the designer/seller’s rules are for specifications like that, but since it’s a custom dress anyway, it wouldn’t hurt to ask.
Glass slippers
The glass slippers are paramount to a great Cinderella wedding, and while no one can actually wear glass and expect not to end up with cut-up feet, here are some (expensive) shoe choices.
(It should be apparent by now that everything in this post is expensive. If you want a Cinderella wedding, you’ve got to pay the price.)
What I’ve found are two shoes from Jimmy Choo–from the Cinderella collection, no less–and a shoe by Betsey Johnson.
The shoe search was by far the easiest part of this post. I only took about 15-20 minutes to find these shoes. You don’t even want to know how long it took to find the right wedding dress options. You especially don’t want to know how long it took to find something suitable and similar enough to work as Prince Christopher/Charming’s clothes.
Makeup
I do like makeup, but I’m not someone you should turn to for makeup advice, since I tend to stick to the same five products/brands that either work or simply get the job done. (Shoutout to Fenty Beauty for getting into my makeup rotation–I finally have my perfect foundation shade!)
So instead, turn to makeup guru PatrickStarrr, who released a video celebrating Cinderella’s 20th anniversary.
Dressing as the Prince
This picture, while gorgeous, is misleading. In this shot, the prince’s jacket looks like a pearlized white. However in the shot below, it’s the same ice blue color as Cinderella’s dress.
I’m going with the latter, since it makes the most sense–I’d think the groom might want to be coordinated with the bride in this instance. However, the choice is yours.
If you decide to go with blue, then…you’re up a creek without a paddle if you’re looking for a traditional tuxedo or even an 18th century cosplay jacket, because I’ve scoured the internet looking for an ice blue ornate tuxedo only to come up with nothing. As with Cinderella’s dress, if you want something exact, then find a costume maker who can make this to form. However, if you don’t feel like hiring someone or if you just want some options that could be quicker in the long run, here’s what I’ve got.
Option 1: Sherwani
I had to do some out-of-the-box thinking to come up with some of these options. For instance, the below options are Indian wedding clothes. These sherwani weren’t easy to find–even with sherwani, which come in all the colors of the rainbow, it was still hard to find ice blue–but I think if you wear them unbuttoned with a vest and some black slacks, you’ll come out looking great.
Note that some of these are the Indowestern style of sherwani, meaning they’ve got elements of both traditional Indian and Westernized clothes. Some sherwani are made like ornate tunics, and since these are button down, that makes it easier to imagine them operating like Western-style jackets. These three are from G3 Fashion.
I should note that some of these, if not all of these, come with pants. If that’s the case, I’d suggest swapping out the original pants with tuxedo pants or slacks, as I mention above. Not because the pants aren’t cool (they are), but because the prince actually wears black pants with his blue vest-jacket combo. However, it’s your wedding–do what you want to do.
Option 2: Baroque couture
As you’ve seen in the picture near the top of this article, the prince wears gold on his wedding day. If you want to go that route, then there are actually Western-style tuxedos you can wear.
These three are made by Italian designer Ottavio Nuccio for his Baroque collection. And man, are they baroque.
The only prices that are listed on his site are in Euros; I don’t know if there is international shipping. But I think there is a button you can click to inquire about pricing, so maybe more information will be there.
There you have it–some creative ways to get your Cinderella wedding right and tight. I’d be excited to know if anyone uses these suggestions for their wedding, Quinceniera, prom, or any other event that requires a huge, frilly ballgown. At any rate, if you’re having a wedding, make sure to outfit your bridesmaids in appropriately ornate dresses. The dresses don’t have to outshine you, but just don’t make them look like your ugly stepsisters.
If you do that, expect the fairy godmother to turn you into a pumpkin.
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If you’re like me, you probably zoned out on Once Upon a Time sometime between the second and third season, around the time when likeable Sheriff Graham/The Huntsman (played by Fifty Shades of Grey actor Jamie Dornan) was killed and when Cinderella’s fairy godmother was unceremoniously killed by combustion at the beginning of an episode (to this day, that still makes me mad).
After skipping out on the show, you might have still kept up with the goings-on through other folks’ recaps. While there were some cool moments, such as Mulan, played by Jamie Chung, being written as a bisexual warrior who was in love with Sleeping Beauty, a portrayal of Lancelot being played by Sinqua Walls, and the inclusion of Jafar, played by Naveen Andrews (in a very cheesy fashion, mind you), there was tons of awful stuff, such as the dire treatment of characters of color in general. As Stacy Whitman, founder and publisher of Lee & Low Books imprint Tu Books, wrote about the series:
“…I’m highly disappointed with how the show handles its characters of color. Have you noticed how many of them die or get locked away to be forgotten compared to other characters? Sidney (who disappeared to star on Revolution, never to be mentioned again); Tamara, Neal’s fiancée who was trying to sabotage magic and kidnapped Henry (who could as easily have decided to be good and joined up with their team, but no, just got killed off; granted, so did her white partner in crime); Lancelot, who is dead before we ever meet him.”
In the end, you realized you only stayed as interested as you did because of the only truly compelling character in the main cast—Rumplestilskin, played by Robert Carlyle, maybe one of the few actors of the main cast who understood how to play his role with equal parts cheeky camp and believable, emotionally-resonating seriousness.
However, with much of the original cast gone, either because they got tired of playing the characters or wanted to go on to different projects, is Once Upon a Time trying to capitalize on a demographic it misused and drove away by taking the story in a much blacker direction? Enter the new phase of Once Upon a Time, in which Henry, now a grown man, is besieged by a young kid much like how he ambushed Emma in the pilot. Henry has to now figure out how he could be a young girl’s father, even though he has absolutely no recollection of being a father to anyone.
First, let’s talk about the little girl. Lucy (Alison Fernandez) is supposed to be the daughter of Henry and Jacinda/Cinderella (Dania Ramirez). This Cinderella is different than the Cinderella I was writing about above—that Cinderella looked very much like the one we know from the Disney movie.
That leads to the next point: this will the second time we have seen Cinderella portrayed by a woman of color since Brandy’s turn as the character in 1998’s Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Cinderella for The Wonderful World of Disney. It also seems like Ramirez’s dress has more nods towards Brandy’s dress than the Disney cartoon character’s dress, which is interesting.
Compare that to the first Cinderella’s dress shown in that awful episode of Once Upon a Time, which has more nods to the cartoon character’s dress:
(Quite possibly, this was one of the worst episodes of OUAT ever, but it had some of the best costume/hair design ever…go figure.)
If they are making Ramirez’s Cinderella more like Brandy’s version, then maybe there could be something said about how the storyline is focusing on Henry being this kid’s dad instead of the storyline functioning as one that still required the use of Cinderella’s Prince Charming, who would be played by an Asian actor to correspond to the actor who played the Prince opposite Brandy, Paolo Montalban. However, the season isn’t out yet, so maybe there are some surprises in store. I’m always an optimist.
Cinderella’s stepmom Lady Tremaine is played by Gabrielle Anwar, probably best known for her role in USA’s Burn Notice. Anwar herself has Austrian Jewish and Indian heritage, adding to the amount of representation happening in this upcoming season.
Third big surprise—Princess Tiana is going to be a part of this season! Mekia Cox will be playing the character, and Robin Givens will play her mom Eudora. According to Shadow and Act via EW, Eudora won’t be a working-class woman, as she was in The Princess and the Frog, but “a loving mother to Tiana and benevolent noblewoman. Formerly wealthy, now facing financial disaster, she handles the transition with grace and inner moral strength.”
Once again, there’s a lack of a POC prince mentioned as part of the cast. Just like how Brandy’s Cinderella found love with Montalban’s Prince Charming, Tiana married Prince Naveen, a…vaguely beige dude. I say “vaguely beige” because we have no idea where Maldonia is, but we are led to assume that Maldonia’s not full of Anglo-Saxon people. Technically, if you looked at behind-the-scenes stuff, Disney artists fixated on Maldonia being somewhere in the Mediterranean, while Naveen’s name suggests that the culture and people of Maldonia are South Asian and/or Middle Eastern at the very least. I won’t get into my personal dissertation about why I both love Naveen (I mean, come on—he’s a hot guy and he’s a bad boy turned good) and have some problems with how Disney bent over backwards to not use this opportunity to create their first black prince ever, but suffice it to say, Tiana’s currently missing her Naveen, and this would be a great time to cast an actor of color—maybe an upcoming actor of color who needs that big break—in this role.
Another thing to look for this year—a prominent LGBTQ storyline. From the TV Guide video (below), I’m assuming it’s going to be a lesbian-centric storyline, but regardless, Co-EP Edward Kitsis has confirmed that the storyline is, indeed, happening. Will it be treated better than Mulan’s storyline? We’ll have to wait and see.
So that’s what we can expect this go-round in…the fictional area of Hyperion Heights, Seattle (that’s right—we’re not in Storybrooke anymore). Is the OUAT team being shrewd and capitalizing on the current wave of representation hitting Hollywood? Time will tell—if we see any of these WOC killed off or illegitmate reasons or if they’re treated haphazardly, then we’ll better understand the cut of this season’s jib. Until then, I can only say I’ll tune in to see if this season will draw me in just like the very first season of OUAT did.
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For better or worse, I am a huge fan of Disney’s original 1950s animated classic, Cinderella. It’s a masterpiece of simple, effective animation, natural humor, and a lack of time-specific fashion (this story is set sometime in the 1800s, I assume, yet Cinderella and other characters have silhouettes and hairstyles specific to the ’50s).
