With new garments, LDS brides are hot for sleeveless wedding gowns. The trick is getting their hands on those G’s.

Something strange is happening in Utah’s massive marriage industry: Latter-day Saint brides suddenly are clamoring for sleeveless gowns.

Are they planning to flaunt their “porn shoulders,” roundly condemned for decades, on the steps of what Latter-day Saints believe is their most sacred space — a temple? Are they defying preachings of modesty and standards of dress? Are they outsiders or apostates?

Nope. It’s all church approved.

Last fall, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints introduced “open sleeve” garments — which faithful members wear underneath daily clothing as a reminder of sacred covenants — that look more like tank tops than the current capped-sleeve choices. Leaders also offered a light, one-piece, slip-like option, with even narrower shoulder straps.

Now brides-to-be in the Beehive State are keen to get the new garment styles for their temple weddings in these sweltering summer months.

The catch?

They are currently available only outside the United States — including in hot climates across Africa and the Philippines. These breezy garments aren’t coming to America until fall.

So Utahns are seemingly out of luck.

Not so fast. Dogged problem solvers are finding ways to get their hands on a pair or two as their wedding days approach. Many have tapped into the Utah-based faith’s vast global network of volunteers, proselytizers, former missionary companions and old Brigham Young University roommates. Some have paid members living abroad to mail them sleeveless garments or flown themselves to the nearest country where the new styles are sold. Missionary moms picking up their children in Africa have brought along an empty suitcase to fill with the precious commodity to distribute to friends and family.

For Nellie Fredrick, who wore a sleeveless gown to her wedding this week in the Taylorsville Temple, it was easy.

In November, the future bride visited her aunt and uncle in South Africa and snatched up some garments for her June temple “sealing” (marriage).

“I fell in love with them,” she says. “The material was so great and breathable. I love the feel of them. Even sleeping in them is so much better.”

But the piece de resistance was her gown.

“I can wear a dress that feels like me,” Fredrick says. “I can feel gorgeous and feminine and also be able to remember Jesus Christ on the most important day of my life.”

She’s hardly alone.

Nellie’s sister, Sophie, is also wearing a sleeveless wedding dress for her marriage later this summer. Her temple sealing is set for Aug. 9.

She loves the feel of the new styles and knows they will help her keep cool during what could be a blistering hot backyard reception.

For Sophie, wearing temple garments hasn’t been an uncomfortable obligation and she never considered not wearing them to her wedding.

Now she doesn’t have to choose between comfort and covenants.

“I get the dress I want,” she says, “as well as the reminders of my faith.”

Upending Utah’s bridal industry

Weddings are big business in Utah, where the dominant Latter-day Saint faith preaches and even pushes the faithful to marry, especially in one of its temples.

Through the years, scores of wedding planners and businesses have sprung up to cater to Latter-day Saint fiancees, looking for a gown that would cover the capped sleeve on their garments.

Some — Fantasy Bridal, Moments Made Bridal and For Always Modest Bridal, to name a few — advertise their services by explicitly using the word “modest” in their marketing.

One, Bridal Closet, is even clearer in its marketing: Under the heading “Temple Ready,” the website says, “Our modest wedding dresses represent your beliefs while letting your true beauty, femininity and personality shine.”

Courtney Zwick, a Latter-day Saint mom in Salt Lake City, always wanted to be a high-end dress designer.

Zwick was frustrated by the clothing choices for bridesmaids and wedding parties that would cover the capped sleeves and lengths of traditional temple garments. About a year ago, she decided to open her own boutique, The Courtney Shop, at 2145 E. 2100 South, to feature “exquisite designer dresses” — with sleeves.

“Bad timing,” she says ruefully.

Now Zwick is embracing the new garment styles as an exciting opportunity for her store.

Most Latter-day Saint mothers and grandmothers likely will not wear sleeveless dresses themselves, she says, but this change “will help me bridge the gap between designing for the younger and older generations.”

The end of judging?

For Latter-day Saint women, the capped sleeve proved to be a source for snap judgments. It became a not-so-secret code signifying who was in or out of the church.

Dress length was never a way to determine if a woman was wearing the prescribed garment, Zwick says. “Your leg length, how you pull them up, how stretchy the material is — these can all make a difference. I don’t think looking at a woman in a dress and looking at the length was an indicator whether she had them on or not.”

But if members saw a woman in a sleeveless dress or shirt, the designer says, “they immediately would judge she didn’t have her garments on.”

Zwick, whose husband is a bishop of a young single adult ward, believes “that the new sleeveless garment is going to help with not judging.”

For years, some Latter-day Saint leaders went out of their way to suggest that teens, even young girls, should cover their shoulders as a sign of modesty and to prevent boys from having “impure thoughts.”

Bare shoulders, for example, were off-limits in church publications. A decade ago, this concern even reached down to girls as young as 4.

An issue of the Friend, the church’s magazine for children, carried a story of little Hannah, who wanted to wear to the zoo a sundress that her grandma had given her, but she noticed it didn’t have any sleeves. So her mother put a T-shirt under it.

“Now,” the child said, “I am ready to go to the zoo.”

An illustration in a 2011 Ensign, the former official magazine for adult members, even added sleeves to female angels in one of painter Carl Bloch’s masterpieces.

For her part, Zwick doesn’t think bare arms or shoulders on women are particularly seductive.

“I don’t think seeing them would make someone think a sexual thought,” she says. “When we’re young and thin, we have beautiful arms. Just let us show them.”

Instagrammer Rachel Gerber of LDS Changemakers says the revolution in the Latter-day Saint bridal industry has already begun.

Indeed, the most recent cover of BYU-Hawaii’s magazine featured an Asian bride wearing a sleeveless dress in front of the temple.

“There are so many cute dresses coming out,” Gerber says. “Mormon wedding dresses used to stick out like a sore thumb.”

Now, she says, “it will be harder to tell.”

And sleeveless gowns will be easier to sell.

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