Defying Tradition, and Working Out, to Wear Bridal Crop Tops

When Cammy Hébert began planning her May wedding to Nick Miller, she knew a froufrougown would not do. Visions of Emilio Pucci danced in her head: specifically, a photoshe came across years ago, in which a model wore a tight short-sleeved crop top and a long skirt reminiscent of a bunch of doilies.

“People are finally doing more and more skirts, but they’re still doing them with those bedazzled corsets, which is so not my look,” said Ms. Hébert, 29, a founder of the Los Angeles-based clothing line Show Me Your Mumu.

She conceived of her own two-piece wedding dress with the bridal designer Watters: a “princess fun skirt” paired with a simple cropped tank top, “sort of reminiscent of Calvin Klein in the ’90s, that cuts in so you can see my shoulders,” she said. And, crop tops being what they are, also showing her midsection.

“I’m not in shape enough to be in a crop top in front of 300 people yet,” Ms. Hébert said. “I’m on my way.”

Images: green bridesmaid dresses

Michelle Obama arms, take a back seat. The trend of midriff-exposing topshas entered the bridal department, possibly adding a whole new element of angst for those who dare to bare quite a bit more than most traditions dictate. (Though in some traditions, like those of India, brides have worn midsection-revealing saris and lenghas for centuries.)

With waist-cinchers out of the question for midriff-baring brides, working out is all but a must. Ms. Hébert has increased her Lagree-style Pilates regimen to three classes a week, which she takes at the Studio (MDR) in Marina del Rey, Calif., under the tutelage of her future sister-in-law, Mary Miller. “It’s a love-hate relationship right now,” Ms. Miller said.

The method of Pilates that Ms. Miller teaches includes cardiovascular exercises, which increases calorie burn. “You’re going to get that heart rate up, you’re going to start sweating,” she said.

And, Ms. Hébert, said, “It gets these weird little small stomach muscles that you didn’t even know you had.”

Spinning is also a favored calorie burner. Fiona Gibb, 41, took classes atSoulCycle and Karen Lord Pilates Movement in TriBeCa in anticipation of her Aug. 8 wedding.

“I do a lot of oblique things, oblique presses on the bike,” said Nicholas Wagner, a SoulCycle instructor who regularly sees Ms. Gibb on a bike at 7 a.m. “We do a lot of stabilizing exercises to keep your core engaged.”

But exercise alone does not ensure a flat stomach.

Ms. Hébert is cutting out one caloric vice a month in the run-up to her wedding (gone already: pizza, chips and French fries). Ms. Gibb planned to exercise restraint even after the vows, or at least until her photographer packed up.

“When you’re actually wearing the crop top, it’s not like you can get there and stuff your face all night,” she said. “There are considerations to be made.”

One key to flaunting the crop top is simply being body-confident to begin with. “I always love working out,” said Rebecca Brown, 33, who ran and took boot camp and Pilates classes in the months leading up to her wedding. “I’d say I paid a little more attention to my obliques but I didn’t really do anything that different.” It was a continuation of her normal routine, she added.

AdvertisementContinue reading the main storyAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySheena Patel, 30, who is wearing a midriff-revealing lengha for her Oct. 24 wedding reception, said her routine involves situps and planks. A lot of planks.

“I didn’t even realize there were so many things you can do with planks,” she said.

Why not zip into something buttressed with boning, have cake, and eat it, too? Crop-top-preferring brides pass on that idea.

“Dresses are really boring,” said Ms. Brown, who wore a secondhand tulle skirt, a sequined Alice & Olivia crop top and a pair of personalized Air Jordan sneakers for her May 23 wedding in Sonoma, Calif. “My favorite type of outfit is drop-crotch trousers and a crop top. This just felt like an extension of that, as opposed to being stuffed up in a dress.”

Designers have caught on. Reem Acra paired a rib-grazing lace blouse with a flowing skirt in its fall 2015 bridal collection, and Theia debuted a tube top/crop top double threat at its spring 2016 show. For her wedding, Ms. Gibb wore a silk crepe pencil skirt and bell-sleeve top from the New York-based label Houghton.

“They make the pieces custom and I said, ‘Don’t make the crop top too short, I’m not a 19-year-old model,’ ” she said. “For me, it was just a slight gap between the pieces.”

Houghton has pushed the envelope with some of its other bohemian-punk designs, including a cape that reveals the better part of the wearer’s chest and an asymmetrical skirt that, in the front, hits well above the knee. (Grooms looking to make a statement, take note: They also offer drop-crotch dress pants.)

Crop tops, the Houghton designer Katharine Polk argued, can be chaste.“It’s not like you’re walking down the aisle in a bikini,” she said. “Showing a lot of cleavage with a sweetheart neckline could be way more offensive.”Not everyone sees it that way. “There were definitely family members that thought it was way too casual, way too weird,” Ms. Brown said. “But my mom got married in a suit, so she totally gets me.”

Yet these brides don’t foresee their bare midsection being the thing they remember most about their big day. The working out, the dieting and any sturm und drang about showing their waistline sometimes gets sidelined by other wedding-day must-haves, contradictory as they may seem.“I want a queso fountain at my wedding,” Ms. Hébert said.

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