BREAKAWAY BRIDE

When Susannah Cahalan, the author of the popular memoir “Brain on Fire,” shopped for a wedding dress late last year, she ventured well off the beaten path, stopping in at Stone Fox Bride for a cropped top and flowing skirt. Her chief consideration, she said, “was that I be able to wear my dress more than one time.”

Then, with her Nantucket wedding well behind her, Ms. Cahalan, 31, had the skirt dip-dyed in a muted shade of pink. She is likely to wear it, she said, with flat Grecian sandals and a T-shirt on top.

Lindsay Carr, the account director for a fashion-rental house, who will marry next fall, has similarly turned her back on the layer-cake look of many wedding dresses. Instead Ms. Carr, 31, chose a slinky green satin gown by the ready-to-wear designer Sophie Theallet, having persuaded Ms. Theallet, a friend, to rework that dress in white.

Her choice, like that of Ms. Cahalan, is likely to resonate with a candidly outspoken millennial generation: young breakaway brides whose brook-no-nonsense tastes and attitudes have begun to infiltrate the once rigidly conventional bridal market. In their 20s or early 30s, many are inclined to modify or entirely shuck off what they view as stuffy, archaic traditions, among them the long white dress, the bridal bouquet and, in telling instances, even the veil, rewriting the style rules to suit themselves.

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