Forget chair covers, the DJ-versus-band debate and the catering: in the planning of a wedding, nothing comes close to the emotional significance of choosing The Dress. But now this challenge has become even bigger, because a single outfit is no longer enough. Now you need to plan a mid-wedding costume change, to take you from elegant bride to star of the reception.

Let's look at the evidence. Earlier this month Poppy Delevingne married in a custom Chanel gown in London, then had a second ceremony in Marrakech wearing a flowing Pucci number. Kim Kardashian arrived at her wedding last weekend in a long Givenchy lace dress, then changed into a custom Balmain beaded frock for the reception. 

The two-dress trend has a royal following too. When the Duchess of Cambridge married in 2011, she wore two different Alexander McQueen gowns. But things used to be very different. In the 18th and 19th centuries, for example, a bride would have one wedding dress, which would then turn into her best special-occasion dress to wear in the future – it might be altered multiple times over the years to come. So when did it become the case that one frock is not enough – and will we all end up following suit?

In the case of Kim, there was perhaps a practical reason for the extra dress – you don't want your cousin standing on your three-metre lace train when he's drunkenly doing the YMCA at 2am (or at least that's the vibe at the weddings we get invited to). But the sense of theatre is equally important. As every performer knows, you're not a star without at least one costume change. If you've only got one outfit, you're no better than a normal person on their weekly trip to Sainsburys. Your adoring crowd deserves more – and anyway, twice the dresses means twice the press fodder when OK! publishes the exclusive photos.

The publicity around celebrity nuptials tends to be huge, so offering a dress to a famous bride is a guaranteed PR win for a brand. Until recently the name 'Riccardo Tisci' might have been unfamiliar outside the fashion industry – but no Kardashian fan could fail to identify the creative director of Givenchy since that wedding. As a celebrity prepares for her Big Day, we imagine that she's probably batting away multiple offers of designer gowns. If you were in that situation, would you stop at one?

But even outside the mysterious kingdom of celebrity, it's increasingly common to encounter a two-dress bride. Modern weddings have become a kind of festival event with two sections, says Susanna Cordner, assistant curator of the V&A's Wedding Dresses 1775-2014 exhibition: 'There's now the traditional dress for daytime, and then the party dress. Kate Moss's wedding, for example, went on for two days. You don't want to wear something formal to get married one morning, and then still be wearing it at 4am the next day.'

At a recent wedding that I attended, the bride wore a beautiful floor-length Temperley gown. It was delicate, clingy and expensive – so expensive that she knew she'd have to sell it after the wedding. But this bride also happens to be the life and soul of the party, and a demon on the dancefloor. The prospect of waking up the next day to a hemline covered in grubby footprints and a dress streaked with the remnants of Jagerbombs was just too terrifying, so she picked up a short, high-street white frock for the evening's festivities. The Temperley dress survived, and is now in the safe hands of another bride who can't wait to wear it.

For NEVER UNDERDRESSED deputy editor Kelly Bowerbank, having more than one wedding look was totally appropriate for who she is in everyday life – creative and expressive. 

'There were lots of reasons that I ended up with multiple wedding outfits, but it ultimately boiled down to practicality,' she says. 'If I was going to spend a boatload of money then I wanted to be able to wear the dress more than once. Having said that, I wasn’t willing to give up the mountain of feathers I desperately wanted to wrap myself in (and a train of ostrich and emu is a lot of things but it’s definitely not practical), so something had to give. That something ended up being the number of outfits, which topped out at a rather extravagant four in the end. On reflection, as someone who rarely repeats an outfit day to day, it seemed quite fitting.'

Not every bride enjoys this decision process as much as Kelly did, however. For some, the sheer admin and time involved with finding the perfect dress is stressful enough – without having to do it more than once. Unless you go the high-street route with your reception party dress, you could also be looking at a significant extra cost. But as celebrities make it seem increasingly 'normal' to double up on gowns, and social media turns every event into a kind of performance, there's increasing pressure to live up to other people's weddings. And let's face it: it's hard to resist the urge for a costume change, when celebrities like Poppy and Kim make it look so damn photogenic.

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