Whether you’re a retailer who specializes in weddings—or you’re expanding your products to include wedding-focused fashion, beauty, and accessories—you can now power your product attributions with AI. This will more easily and quickly connect brides, grooms, wedding parties, and guests to your products.
Here, I’ll dive into why Lily has expanded to include bridal and groomsmen tags in our taxonomy. As experts in the wedding fashion space—having worked for Sarah Seven, Alexandra Grecco, Brideside, and several bridal retailers—my team and I have been tracking the hottest trends in wedding fashion and beauty this year. Below, I’ll discuss a few of them in detail . . . and I’ll show how retailers can capitalize on all of them.
Why Did We Expand to Include Bridal Trends?
The wedding industry has changed a lot over the last few years. Today, there are many more opportunities to appeal to a wider array of aesthetics and tastes. Therefore, many retailers are swooping into the wedding market, hoping to capture the attention of cost-focused, non-traditional couples, as well as the evergreen traditional couples. Lily AI meets these changing retailer and consumer demands.
Social media is possibly the biggest catalyst of change for wedding trends and aesthetics. From finding inspiration on Pinterest, to sharing photos of the big day (and everything leading up to it!) on Instagram, social media is now an integral part of the wedding planning process. This impacts what people want to buy for their weddings and how they are informed of what’s trendy.
Rising costs and a difficult economy of our post-pandemic world have impacted recent wedding trends as well, especially in fashion. Bridal dresses and gowns have seen costs rise 5-10%. In response to these rising costs, new spins of bride and groom fashion are trending.
Another example of a quick and recent wedding trend change: elopements. Elopements and elopement-inspired fashion are very popular nowadays, as couples ditch lavish bashes for more casual ceremonies. As a by-product of these cost-effective elopements, hemlines have risen. Cheaper, but still chic, bridal mini dresses are having a major moment.
Retailers need to capitalize on these fast-paced trends as quickly as possible, in order to meet customer demand. This is where Lily AI comes into play. In our fast-paced world, new macro- and micro- trend appear seemingly instantly. Our team of retail experts have accounted for trends early, and now, these wedding attributes are in our taxonomy. They’re automatically added to relevant products within our customers’ catalogs, thanks to the power of AI, computer vision, natural language processing, machine learning, and deep learning.
So let’s go through just a few of this year’s biggest trends in fashion and beauty. Here are three trends for brides and three for grooms, from the Lily AI team.
A Guide for Wedding Brands: 2024 Bridal Trends in Fashion and Beauty Trends
Today’s top bridal trends are all about unique spins on tradition and cost-effective looks.
Trend: Civil Chic
As mentioned, elopement is en vogue. In fact, 62% of U.S. couples say they are considering eloping instead of having a traditional wedding. As a result, the Civil Chic trend has become popularized on social media, with #elopement getting 3 million posts on TikTok. #LittleWhiteDress has 99,000 posts on TikTok as well.
The key components of the Civil Chic trend is a white mini dress, an optional blazer or blazer dress, as well as a fingertip veil or sheer white gloves.
Trend: Cool Bride
From icy blue to soft pink hues, unconventionally colored dresses are in! And 2024 bridal collections show that designers are now excited to experiment with color. Its popularity is seen on social media, as #coolBride has 407,000 posts on TikTok.
The Cool Bride is the Anti Bride. She does not want a traditional white dress. Instead, she is characterized by color and fun fabrics like ruffles, tulle, fur and floral appliqué. Cool brides may opt for a short or long dress, then pair their ensemble with a non-conventional veil.
Trend: Modern Bride
This trend is described by Harper’s Bazaar as, “no lace, no beading, and no excessive draping, volume, or fanfare.”
Similar to how 2008’s Great Recession inspired a decade that favored minimalism in fashion, today’s economy is inspiring minimalism in bridal design as well. The #ModernBride fashion and beauty look is trending on social media, with over 2,000,000 posts on TikTok alone.
To achieve the Modern Bride aesthetic, brides opt for a fitted or column, floor length or midi gown. Both dresses and accessories are solid, without pattern or texture. Lastly, Modern Brides opt for simple makeup looks featuring champagne eyeshadows, pink, and nude lips.
A Guide for Wedding Brands: 2024 Groomsmen Fashion Trends
While classic black tie is always in, several groomsmen trends are going for cool and casual.
Trend: Cool Groom
The Cool Groom trend—also known as “Non Traditional Groom”—refers to a men’s suiting option characterized by non traditional menswear attributes, such as floral print, bright colors, and embroidery. In-line with its Cool Bride counterpart, Cool Grooms are part of the #NonTraditionalWedding hashtag, which boasts 95.3k posts on Instagram.
Again, this aesthetic reflects the growing bridal industries trend away from traditional larger weddings and towards smaller, non-traditional events. These smaller gatherings are characterized by fashion that reflects an individual’s personal style, rather than classic, gender-specific dressing.
Trend: Linen Formal
The Linen Formal trend includes casual suiting options for men, geared toward a beach or summer-time setting. Linen fabrication is the cornerstone of this popular trend, whose hashtag #LinenSuit has 72.2k posts on Instagram.
The trend is categorized by relaxed fit with casual suiting options showcased in light neutral colors like beige, cream, and blue. Trendy grooms often complete the look with light colored loafers, a brown belt, and a white relaxed fit button up.
Trend: Western Suit
The Western Suit is a look that’s characterized by bolo ties, cowboy hats, brown and earth tone shades, as well as mismatched colored vests, blazers, and pant options. It’s a boho look that’s reflected in the 3.2 million #BohoWedding posts on Instagram. This groomsmen trend leans on classic western fashion trends and offers a slightly elevated option for a casual western-boho wedding.
You may also see this trend on red carpets or by wedding guests!
Wedding Brands Can Explore More Fashion and Beauty Trends
There are many more wedding trends that Lily AI has tracked for fashion and beauty retailers.
These trends are added to products via AI-powered product attribution, which enhances performance across Google Search, site search, product recommendations, and more.
Lily’s extensive taxonomy is rich with of-the-moment trends, synonyms, and the words and phrases people actually use while shopping for their wedding wear. With Lily AI, these trends, words, and phrases are automatically added to an item’s product attributes in its online listing. This means that our customers’ product attributes reflect this consumer language and trends. This ultimately helps people find, connect with, and ultimately, purchase our customers’ products.
You can learn more about how Lily AI connects people to the hottest trends via customer-centric language in our Product Attribution 101 guide.
And if you’re a wedding brand or bridal retailer—or a retailer expanding into the bridal scene—schedule a demo to capitalize on these trends today!
