Mormon Wedding Jackets

If you're LDS you know exactly what I'm talking about.  These have got to be the ugliest thing on Earth.  Do I blame the brides who wear them or the wedding dress industry?  I'll spread the blame around and call them both to account.  When I got married in the mid 1980's dress manufacturers still made bridal gowns with sleeves and even high necklines.  A Mormon bride could find a dress she liked without too much trouble.  Skip ahead to now; what 99% of wedding dresses are strapless.  LDS brides have turned to the dreaded ugly jacket. This looks almost like the long rectangles they sell with prom dresses to keep them modest.  Both ruin the look of the dress.  In researching this post I found a blog, http://ldsbrideblog.com/adding-sleeves-jackets-vs-build-ups/ that talks about how to make a strapless gown modest.  I also got the pictures from there. One suggestion was to make the jacket out of lace.  I'm glad that was mentioned because just last week my daughter, Holiday, and I were saying lace would be an improvement. We also came up with the idea of some sort of lace blouse to go under the dress.  If the bride can't have a dress made a lace jacket is a much better alternative to the solid fabric jacket. I like the jacket with the cascades, don't get me wrong, but not on top of a wedding dress; come on people.  Make it fuzzy and throw it on to keep yourself warm in early fall. 

Another suggestion was to make what the blog calls "build ups".  Basically this means taking a strapless dress and remaking the bodice while incorporating parts of the original dress and adding sleeves.  My question is why didn't you get someone to make the whole dress the way your wanted it in the first place?   It's got to be cheaper to do it my way. 

LDS brides should make a stink about the lack of modest wedding gowns.  Maybe more manufacturers will go back to making a selection of dresses with sleeves and modest necklines.  I'm tired of seeing these ugly jackets over beautiful wedding gowns.  I'm not the only one.  I looked through my Facebook friends' photos and I found only one with a jacket over dress number.  Surprisingly hers was plain and looked nice.  Most of my friends must have made their dresses or had them made.