The real reason bridesmaids wear matching dresses

Matching bridesmaid dresses have become a long-accepted tradition. Photo / Getty Images

By Clemence Michallon

Matching bridesmaid dresses have become a long-accepted tradition in most weddings, but the custom has a deeper - and slightly scarier - meaning than meets the eye.

Identical bridesmaid attire goes back to Ancient Roman times, according to a Buzz60 video by producer Patrick Jones, and was originally meant to protect the bride from potential kidnappers.

Originally, bridesmaids not only dressed just like one another, but also like the bride herself, according to the Daily Mail.

While upstaging the bride is a definite no-no according to present-day etiquette, the point was for the bride to be impossible to distinguish from her posse.

This ensured that, if any evil kidnappers - or evil spirits, who were thought to sometimes haunt happy events according to Mental Floss - tried to take the bride away, they wouldn't be able to pick the bride out of the crowd.

The bridesmaids essentially acted as decoys against the cunning plan.

Over the Victorian era, wedding organizers became less concerned with threatening kidnappers and malicious spirits, so brides began wearing their own outfit, often more elaborate than the bridesmaids'.

The rest of the bridal party, though, didn't benefit from the modernization, and to this day bridesmaids are often expected to wear identical gowns.

For many friends and relatives of the bride, the tradition comes at a hefty price. Being a bridesmaid costs more than $1,300 on average, according to a recent study by Weddington Way.

The sum includes an average cost of $165 for the dress - but the complete price of the bridesmaid's attire, including makeup, hair, shoes and accessories, comes in at $381.