In a traditional wedding, the bride changes her clothes several times. She wears a white wedding kimono (shiromuku), the most formal of all wedding attire, for the wedding ceremony. The all-white ensemble, sometimes with touches of red, symbolises good fortune and a new beginning. On her head she wears a hood or other head covering, traditionally meant to cover the horns of jealousy.

For the wedding reception, she exchanges the shiromuku for a colorful uchikake and wears metal or fabric flowers (kanzashi) in her hair. Later during the reception, she may change into a wedding furisode, a long-sleeved kimono worn with an obi sash, much like the furisode that she wore as a single woman but longer and with a lightly padded hem, and decorated with wedding-related motifs.

In many modern weddings, brides choose to wear Western-style wedding dresses instead of the furisode, and indeed, sometimes they wear these dresses under their uchikake instead of the traditional kakeshita kimono. Finally, the bride changes into her first married-woman’s formal tomesode kimono, a black short-sleeved kimono with crests on the shoulders, back, and sleeves.