Colors of European vs. Asian Royal Palaces and Weddings

I just got a call that my wedding dress has arrived and is ready for my fitting! Ahhh!

Not only is this thrilling, but it is also highly relevant to this article about royal palaces around the world. Why? Because my dress is white-ish, and so are most royal and governmental buildings in Europe and America! This is in sharp contrast to the bursting rainbow colors of Asian royal buildings and wedding dresses.

Folks, I NEVER thought I would have a white-ish wedding dress, but isn’t the tug of one’s native culture powerful?

I always envisioned I would have some sort of red-green-blue-gold riot of a dress like the one I had made in Ghana. But WHITE? Yikes! I’ve never worn white in my life! Mostly because I eat a lot and spill everything, but also because I think white makes me look like a really tall egg. “Quack quack!” (Wait, I guess eggs don’t make noise.)

Anyway, flash back to last week when I was on a 5-day free teacher training tour through Madrid with EF Tours. During our wonderful and whirlwind sight-seeing, we had the pleasure of touring Spain’s Royal Palace, pictured here in these photos. I tell you, the whole time I couldn’t stop comparing colors, continentally.

Ok, interactive time: Please click here now to open a new window with luscious photos of my tour of Thailand’s Royal Palace in Bangkok.

Whoa! Did your eyes just moisten with the joy of gold-green-purple-blue??? When I strode through Thailand’s Royal Palace in 2009, my heart danced, singing: “THIS is what a royal palace should be! COLOR! Sparklies!”

Back to Spain. And much of Europe and America. As ornate as the inner rooms of Western palaces may be, outwardly, “Regal” often equals: “White-ish.”

Frankly, the whole “White Architecture” thing makes me hungry for vanilla cake with buttercream frosting. Burp!

Back to wedding dresses. When my friend Louisa was married in China, her dress was Lipstick Red silk. Wowza! And I could probably rock out a red wedding dress, myself. So why did I ultimately choose white?

Well, for all my rainbow personality, it turns out that there’s something wonderfully comforting about nuzzling into the arms of my native Euro-American culture. And what’s crazy is I actually look good in my swirly white-ish dress! I will likely never wear white again in my life, so indeed this is a special occasion.

All right readers, weigh in: Comparing the photos of Spain’s white-ish Royal Palace and Thailand’s rainbow one, which do you prefer? And what’s YOUR take on wedding dress colors?