How Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy’s wedding dress changed everything
In 2024, when a doctor friend of mine got married in her hometown of Omaha, Nebraska, she chose a sleek, white column dress with sheer opera-length gloves, her hair tied back. It wasn’t an exact replica of the gown Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy wore to marry John F. Kennedy Jr in 1996, but the resemblance was clear. Tonight, FX’s Love Story will air its wedding episode, and with that on the brain, I texted my friend to ask if she’d been inspired by CBK. She replied: “OK don’t judge, but I didn’t know who Carolyn Bessette was until Love Story came out.”
My friend didn’t have endless hours to plan her wedding, nor is she one for crazy gowns. She just wanted something simple, elegant, and chic, and so she got her Rita Vinieris wedding dress and gloves from local bridal boutiques in town. But even if the image of Bessette-Kennedy’s wedding wasn’t on her mood board, it was clearly on somebody’s. Her influence permeates so deeply, it doesn’t need to be known to be felt.
FX’s Love Story
The photos of the Bessette-Kennedy wedding have been widely disseminated. In what is probably the most iconic image of the couple, they're exiting the chapel as fresh newlyweds. He wears a navy single-breasted suit with a white silk vest and ice blue tie. She, a simple slip-turned-wedding-dress that just grazes the floor. She carries lilies of the valley in arms swathed in sheer gloves. Her hair is knotted at the nape of her neck and she wears little, if any jewelry, aside from her wedding band. It was a look that granted brides everywhere permission to embrace a new, more subdued kind of feminine elegance—a seismic shift in the industry, and one that is still felt today.
“I was nine, but I honestly do feel like I do have a real memory of it,” says founder and principal of Accent PR and Accent Bridal, Gabrielle Katz. She remembers devouring an InStyle weddings issue dedicated to the couple. “I have this sensory memory of poring over this magazine, trying to see any piece of detail that you could possibly see about her dress.”
FX’s Love Story
Katz, 38, is planning her own 200-person wedding set for May at Belcombe Court in Bradford-on-Avon in England. She’s having her dress made, and to begin the process, she pulled images of dresses that inspired her. Bessette-Kennedy’s was the first one that came to mind. “Bridal fashion doesn't appeal to me,” she explains, despite enjoying some of the indulgences that come with planning your own wedding. “It doesn't appeal to a lot of women.”
Kennedy and Bessette-Kennedy were married on the 21st of September, 1996, on Cumberland Island in Georgia. The ceremony welcomed only 40 guests. The dress was designed by her friend Narciso Rodriguez, who had worked with her at Calvin Klein where she was PR director. It was a bias-cut, floor-length gown made of pearl-colored silk crepe—that reportedly cost $40,000. It fit the ethos of her heavily documented personal style. She dressed like a Calvin Klein girl of that time would, in sleek minimal separates, arranged with her own subtle flair. And instead of the ball gown one might expect of impending American pseudo-royalty, she made her own favorite slip-dress silhouette into a wedding dress.
“The simplicity of it was so of-the-moment and so her,” says Ann Mashburn, who was working in magazines in New York at the same time as Bessette-Kennedy. They knew each other like anyone would know peers in the industry: “She was just the PR girl, you know, Carolyn at Calvin Klein.”
Bessette-Kennedy was working in fashion, had strong opinions about her own clothing, and had access to people who could realize those dreams for her. “The wedding industry was so different then, too,” Mashburn, four years her senior, says. A range of options did not exist like they do now. “I remember thinking it was really beautiful. And that it was right, even normal, for her. It resonated with me because I'm a very less-is-more person.” Mashburn, who was married a few years before, also had a designer friend, David Cameron, make her something simple and elegant for her own wedding—and also wore gloves.
Princess Diana’s 1981 wedding
In ‘96, the bridal industry was still enamored with silhouettes we now associate with the 1980s. Big poofy skirts—and sleeves. Portrait necklines. Dramatic veils. Just think of Princess Diana’s cupcake gown in 1981, and the subsequent big celebrity weddings. Victoria Beckham, married in 1999, wore a champagne-colored silk Vera Wang dress with a big ball skirt—and then changed into ostentatious matching purple ensembles with her new husband. Celine Dion, married in ‘94, wore an embellished silk and lace ball gown with an elaborate veiled headdress. Even Michelle Obama, not yet a household name, was married in ‘92 in a silk dress with a dramatic collar and sweeping train. I texted my mom, an armchair fashion expert and vocal devotee of Bessette-Kennedy’s style, to gauge her opinion on how she thought the dress changed things. She responded: “Simplicity. Everything was fluffy. It gave a minimalist the okay to go bare and sleek.”
Bessette’s dress bucked tradition and made a statement about how her life would look as a Kennedy. For the rest of the world, or at least those concerned with fashion, it granted permission to dress like yourself on your wedding day. There’s a paradigm to wedding dresses that has been around way longer than Bessette and has outlived her. Even today, the big wedding complex has instilled an idea that this is a woman’s moment to look like a princess—with all the associations of status and wealth that that implies. Think frothy Say-Yes-to-the-Dress-style confections with elaborate beading and corsetry. Those with the resources often capitalize in a big way—and an even bigger dress. “The wedding industry as a whole speaks to a kind of archetypal woman,” Katz reiterates. “There's nothing wrong with it, but that's not for everybody. Not every woman wants a firework display that goes off after you say I do. Women who wear Toteme and The Row, they have to get married, too.”
Celine Dion's 1994 wedding dress
I texted a former colleague whose dress, I remembered, skewed minimal: a tank column style dress from Amsale for her 2022 wedding. “She was definitely an influence,” she replied, when I asked about Bessette-Kennedy. “My mom was such a fan of her style and would reference it. I always knew that I would go the simple route.” After I pried a little further: “I honestly never loved wedding dresses as a genre and liked that the CBK dress didn’t totally scream ‘wedding.’” But her dress didn’t look exactly like Bessette’s, nor will Katz’s.
“I took from it more in spirit,” Katz says, asking herself, “What is your absolute favorite dress to wear?” Her moodboard also features images like one of Nicole Kidman in John Galliano for Dior, a silk silk chartreuse dress with Chinoiserie embroidery, in 1997. “[Bessette] wasn't trying to be anything else. And anybody that's trying to emulate that exactly, it doesn't end up the same.”
Like so much of the lore around Bessette-Kennedy, this choice has come to represent so much more than a wedding dress. Ironically, in Katz’s own work, the photo doesn’t come up very often. She caters to the type of bride who calls in a PR team for her event—and that is the antithesis of what Bessette was going for. “She just wore a beautiful dress that was like her, and I think that's inspirational,” says Mashburn. “She really was just herself, and, you know, was pretty cool about it.”
