17 wedding dress styles you need to know about if you're shopping for the big day

From short or square-neck to bohemian and ballgowns, we've got you covered

22 June 2022

17 Essential Wedding Dress Styles To Know

You might only have just got engaged but it’s time to start thinking about wedding dress styles, if only to bat off helpful suggestions from your great aunt / future mother-in-law / boss that you’d look gorgeous in a meringue. To be fair, you would, but that's not the point!

To help you navigate the frankly baffling array of wedding dresses available to brides today, let GLAMOUR guide you through 17 of the most popular wedding dress styles. You will find your perfect dress style in here, we guarantee.

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If you are planning a stately home do, full of drama and classic romance, you’d do well to consider a dress with a fishtail skirt. This silhouette is pretty self-explanatory, but if you need a visualisation, it echoes a mermaid’s tail. Fitted over the waist and hips and then flaring out from the lower thighs or knees, it is reminiscent of some of Hollywood’s most memorable red carpet moments too and will never look out of date in your photos. Coast’s fishtail bandeau dress is an excellent high street find. Off-the-shoulder wedding dresses also manage to have a dusting of old school magic to them, particularly when teamed with a full-skirt below. ASOS's structured off-the-shoulder Lola style looks way more expensive than it's price tag reveals and also provides the best backdrop for accessorising with some fabulous jewellery.

The ballgown wedding dress style makes an equally large statement but flows from the waist into an upside down bell shape, just like Cinderella’s ballgown. We adore Emilia Wickstead’s version.

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Slip dresses echo their high fashion counterpart (check out Nili Lotan’s jersey maxi dress) for easy-going brides, but there's no bridal rule that your dress has to touch the floor. Short wedding dresses are a modern option (we love Galvan’s satin halterneck and ASOS’s puff sleeve mini dress - which also ticks the wedding dress style of statement sleeves, too.)

If you’re opting for two dresses over the course of your day, short dresses are a clever choice for an evening session on the dancefloor - once you’ve thrown your bouquet - and Kourtney Kardashian's Italian wedding has thrown them into the spotlight like never before. A sequinned wedding dress (like this one from Retrofete) is ultra-glam if you have an evening party planned. If you do, check out our ideas for evening wedding dresses here.

For brides looking for a little more romance, ASOS has a demure long sleeve lace dress while Erdem has the most exquisite dress with a high neckline, embroidered organza panels and a bow at the back - to give your guests something to look at while you exchange vows. The style of 2022 is undisputedly the square-necked wedding dress, which Nicola Peltz wore to marry Brooklyn Beckham. We found a brilliant square-necked option for under £500 from Whistles. While this neckline is totally on-trend right now, it still manages to be utterly timeless, which is what every bride dreams for, right?

So, which style will make you say yes to the dress?