It used to be that everyone who attended a temple wedding was supposed to be dressed in their temple robes. I’m not sure when (perhaps in the 1980s) only the bride and groom were supposed to wear temple robes, and everyone else just wears their “Sunday Best”? Why do you think that policy changed?
Wheat & Tares 
i know one guy that wont be happy about that
http://emp.byui.edu/huffr/The%20Unwritten%20Order%20of%20Things%20–%20Boyd%20K.%20Packer.htm
I don’t know why or when the policy changed but perhaps we should first ask why the previous policy existed.
It’s been in place for at least 15 years or more where those attending the sealing only just come in the Sunday clothes and remove their shoes and wear white stockings/socks.
The explanation given to me was that large numbers of white-clad wedding attendees tended to overwhelm the locker room and clothing resources in some of the church’s larger and busier temples. In a temple such as Salt Lake, with weddings proceeding on a more or less uninterrupted basis throughout the day, the problem could likely become acute.
It was this way (church dress for guests rather than temple whites) at my wedding, and I’ve been married 23 years. I imagine it changed because it seems they used to have everyone do a session first, but at some point that wasn’t mandatory.
Hawkgrrl again hits the nail on the head. It used to be encouraged (mandatory?) to do a session prior to the wedding, and some temples (such as Idaho Falls) have sealing rooms accessible only via the celestial room. Obviously this takes a tremendous amount of time, so to reduce laundry and expedite the process, a change was made, reducing the time from 3 hours per wedding to 30 minutes.
A residue of the old way is retained in the groom taking his bride through the veil prior to sealing.
I’m leery of this sort of change. Isn’t changing the ordinances one of the major signs of apostacy we lay at the feet of the early Catholic Church? The changes to the initiatory and endowment over the last 100 years are at least as dramatic as the changes to baptism in the first 500 years after Christ.
You’re at least 20 years late with your estimated change in the policy. I remember my parents talking about going to weddings in the 1960s, where the extra time required for an endowment session prior to the wedding was a factor in their decision whether to attend. (As compared to the more usual sealings where there wasn’t an endowment session immediately before the sealing.)
My sisters were married over 40 years ago, and their wedding guests did not attend an endowment session immediately prior to the sealing. At my wedding, nearly 39 years ago, the only one in temple clothing other than my wife and I was a guy from our ward who just happened to wander in to the sealing.
I thought it was about the same time that we changed the Book of Mormon from saying “white and delightsome” to “pure and delightsome.”
I know it was already changed by the time I was married in Denver in 1989. We had one guest who was a temple groundskeeper; Sister Iconoclast had known her at BYU and she and I served in the same mission together. She washed her hands, put on a skirt, came to the sealing, and then watched us take pictures on the temple grounds while trimming bushes in a coverall. 🙂
I wish my wedding had been the old way, with everyone attending in temple robes. Instead, I felt very self-conscious being the only one (apart from my bride) in ridiculous ceremonial attire, on one of the most emotional days of my life, while my friends, family and other well-wishers were all smartly dressed as they looked on.
At the very least, I wish they would get rid of (or possibly modernize) the silly ceremonial hat. Aside from it’s weird appearance, it digs into my head and causes headaches.
My husband and I always joke (although this is entirely true) that the only thing we remember from our sealing is that the sealer talked to us beforehand and said, “Today is going to be very busy, happy, and stressful, and you’ll be distracted by a million different things. Pay close attention to everything I’m going to say, so that you can reflect on that.” Those are the last words either of us remembers.
Hawk, our sealer told us that we wouldn’t remember a word he said. I’m sure everything else he said that day was also eternal truth, but I do testify that those words were true! 🙂
We were actually sealed twice, due to a quirk in the sealing ceremony. That’s an interesting story. I’ll have to figure out how I can tell it without talking out of school.
We were married in the Salt Lake temple in 1995 and chose to have guests in white temple clothes (but not robes); it was an optional decision then and is no longer a choice due to the locker room situation as mentioned above. I loved the feeling of walking in to a group that looked like angels with the faces of people I knew and loved. Attending sealings now in Sunday best with footlet socks doesn’t create the same experience for me.
My guess would be to distinguish the bride and groom (presumably the sealer is in temple white as well) from the wedding party.
It’s the Lord’s House, He can do what He wants with it.
Just as in Oriental cultures white is also considered a symbol of Death (would it better for temples in the Far East to have patrons go all in black, candidate for a thread-jack!), not EVERYONE that likes white has heavenly criteria in mind…though sometimes just for amusement.