NEW YORK _ And the bride wore ... pink. Or lime. Or lipstick-red.

Walking down the aisle has never looked so colorful, thanks to a modern breed of bride who is saying "I do" to a whole new hue.

Courting color is the business of bridal salon owners Michelle Roth and Henry Weinreich, who grabbed the old adage about "something blue" and ran with it. Indeed, periwinkle blue is the number one choice for their contemporary customers who fast-forward right past the time-honored white wedding dress. While there's no shortage of demand at the salon for basic ivory or candlelight, periwinkle is "traditionalist with a twist," says Roth.

Next, in order of her customer preference, comes lilac ("highly feminine and ethereal"), then blush pink ("more traditional and feminine"), maize or yellow ("warm and sophisticated"), and gold ("Renaissance princess"). Brides desiring a blaze of color choose lime green ("bold, definite, cool, calm and collected") or red ("passionate").

At bridal salon Michelle Roth in New York, sales of colorful dresses, be they belle-of-the-ball gowns or sleek embroidered columns, have doubled in the past year. Chalk it up to fashion freedom, says Weinreich, executive vice president. He is also the brother of Roth, company founder and president.

"Today's bride is not going to be told when to marry, how to marry and whom to marry. She is far more independent," says Weinreich, who caters to a clientele composed largely of first-time brides, 30 to 45 years old.

"No one today can tell a bride what style to wear or what color to wear. That is why we have seen such phenomenal growth in the use of color, be it a smattering of color on the gown or the entire gown itself," says Weinreich.

And that is why "around one-fifth of our brides are walking down the aisle in canary yellow or blue," he says.

Roth and Weinreich are doing their best to take a bite out of the wedding apparel market, which generates billions in annual retail sales. Their salon whispers European charm, attracting well-to-do customers in search of designer gowns from $2,500 to $30,000.

Brides taxi over from as near as New York City's Upper East Side, or jet in from as far away as Argentina and Australia, and those are just the A's. In other words, they represent "pretty much every major country in the world," says Weinreich.

He and Roth are hardly strangers to the global map. They are natives of Sydney, Australia, where their parents, Holocaust survivors from Poland, have operated one of the nation's largest bridal gown companies, Henri Josef, for 42 years.

"I think I was born with lace in my blood," says Roth. "My mother always told me that. And my grandmother was a milliner during World War II who emigrated from Poland to Israel and opened a dressmaking business. I was brought up with a sense of European style," says Roth, who converses easily with her clients in French and Polish, while Weinreich's contribution is Hebrew and some German.

Backed by her parents' business, in 1992 Roth created a New York bridal boutique from her apartment, where she showcased the collections of Australian designers. Only a year later, she opened the current salon on New York's tony 57th Street. Weinreich, a lawyer who lived in London from 1987 to 1992, was a concert promoter before joining the family business.

The salon, with its celadon green crescent-shaped couches, high ceilings and canopied dressing rooms, offers gowns of more than 20 top designers from New York, London, Paris, Rome and Milan. European bridal gowns tend to be more fashion-forward in color and design, says Roth.

But there are additional considerations when choosing just the right color.

"When we style a bride, we take everything into account _ the location, the season, the time of day, and what the bride wants to reflect," says Weinreich.

"We recently had a bride with an extremely gregarious personality _ sunshine personified. She was getting married on a farm and was riding in on a horse. So heeeello," says Weinreich, suggesting a conclusion that to the styled-minded might seem obvious.