Basic Trope: A woman's wedding dress becomes stained with blood, showing something awful happened at a wedding.
- Straight: When Alice is getting married, the groom Bob is shot, splattering Alice's dress in his blood.
- Exaggerated: Alice is absolutely deluged by blood. Her dress looks like a red dress.
- Downplayed: Bob is injured, resulting in just a little blood being spilled on her wedding dress.
- Justified: This could easily happen in real life.
- Inverted:
- Alice is a vampire, and decorated her dress with blood. She is horrified when the blood is removed from her wedding dress.
- Alice is dressed in a red wedding dress. When Bob gets shot, it turns out that he's a Human Alien with white-ish blood, and her dress gets splattered by the white substance.
- Subverted:
- It turns out the man who shot Bob missed and shot a wine bottle. Alice is covered in wine.
- Alice and Bob perform an animal sacrifice at their wedding, as is customary in their culture. Some of the animal blood spills on Alice.
- Gender Inverted: Bob's bride is murdered, and his white tuxedo is splattered with her blood.
- Double Subverted:
- ... And then he shoots Bob again and covers Alice in blood.
- Bob accidentally cuts himself on the ritual knife, and some of the blood is on Alice.
- Parodied: Alice rushes out of the church with her blood-stained dress... And when she comes home, it turns out that her period started in the middle of the wedding and she forgot to bring any pads or tampons.
- Zig-Zagged: Someone shoots at Bob, but the bullet misses. Alice pulls out a knife and stabs the assailant to death, getting herself drenched in gore. Alice knew that something like this would happen, so she has some identical spare wedding dresses that she quickly changes into. And then she has her period during the reception, which gets all over the second gown, so she changes into a third wedding dress.
- Averted: No wedding dress is covered in blood.
- Enforced: The producers want a striking and horrifying scene, and the red-on-white contrast and love-death irony work well for it.
- Lampshaded:
- "A wedding without at least one death is considered a dull affair."
- "Why does this always happen to strong empowered brides?"
- "Careful with that white, you don't want someone to bleed on it!"
- "What's the best way to clean blood out of fine white silk? Bleach, salt, or both?"
- Implied: A few years after the wedding, one of Alice's friends is helping her clean up her closet and pulls her wedding dress out. It has a pinkish tint in some parts, and when the friend asks Alice what happened, she panics and leaves the room.
- Invoked:
- The hitman sent to kill the groom is specifically told to kill him during the wedding.
- Alice is an extremely capable Action Girl and an extremely Violently Protective Bride. Getting blood stains on her wedding dress is an acceptable tradeoff if it means she can save Bob from death.
- Alice comes from a culture where animal sacrifices are performed at weddings, and getting some sheep's blood on the wedding dress is considered good luck.
- Alice and Bob smear their own blood on each other's foreheads as part of a local marriage custom. Some of the blood dribbling onto their clothes is considered good luck.
- Exploited: Bob fakes his death at the wedding reception, so Alice cuts her arm, smears the blood all over her dress, and then goes to collect Bob's life insurance.
- Defied: Alice's wedding dress is specially designed to be stainproof.
- Discussed: ???
- Conversed: ???
- Deconstructed: Alice's friend Claire is afraid of getting married after witnessing Alice get drenched in blood at a wedding.
- Reconstructed: Claire eventually does get married, but accidentally cuts herself at the wedding reception, leading to blood on her dress.
- Played for laughs: Alice is so enamored with Bob's appearance at the wedding that she has an intense Romantic Nosebleed, causing her to sneeze blood all over her wedding dress.
- Played for Drama: Alice is a vampire, while Bob is Afraid of Blood. Alice is also a messy eater, and trying to drink the Maid of Honor's blood causes blood to spill on her wedding dress. Bob has a Freak Out at the reception.
- Played for Horror: One of the Virus-Victim Symptoms caused by a monster's bite is to start vomiting up blood. Alice suffers this symptom at her wedding, drenching her wedding dress in her own blood.
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