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a. I kissed the bride, in her wedding gown.

b. I kissed her, in her wedding gown.

c. I kissed the bride, wearing a beautiful wedding gown.

d. I kissed her, wearing a beautiful wedding gown.

Which could mean that the bride/she was in a wedding gown?

Would taking the comma away change anything?

Many thanks

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    Once you say bride, we know who wore the bridal clothing. "I shot an elephant in my pyjamas" may be different, but not really. You could create sentences where the comma distinguishes beween two meanings.
    – Yosef Baskin
    Commented May 14 at 23:55

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None of these sound natural in English, mainly for the reason Yosef Baskin explained: All are ambiguous about who is wearing the wedding gown or seem to connect the kiss to the wedding gown in a way that raises questions without further context.

(a) without the comma sounds like it could be a line from a children's rhyme: e.g., "I kissed the bride in her wedding gown / on the way to London town". (This isn't an actual nursery rhyme--I just made it up!) This feels clearly like the bride is wearing the wedding gown, not the speaker, but it answers "why are you mentioning the wedding gown?" with "well, I needed a rhyme."

If you really need to mention the wedding gown and the kiss in the same sentence, you can say, "I kissed the bride while she was wearing her wedding gown." To me this now sounds like an illicit moment between the bride and someone definitely not the groom. The wedding gown now feels like a telling detail to emphasize the taboo situation.

(b) is similar to a. (c) and (d) definitely sound like the speaker is wearing the wedding gown, which would make perfect sense if the wedding has two brides but would not be phrased in this way--it's not a grammatical issue, but it's unnatural.

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