Can't Believe What I've Just Seen at a Wedding

I totally agree!

OP I think this is on you. It's up there with people saying 'don't be ignorant' when you're ignoring them. Wedding dresses do not have the monopoly on trains, satin or lace. If it looked like a wedding dress design and was, for example, green, it's a ballgown.

My best friend asked me to wear either red or white to her wedding. I wore an ivory tea dress. There was absolutely zero confusion I could possibly be the bride, however ball gown, train, , bit much/ strange.
my. Wedding was black tie. My sister's wore floor length corset back dresses but the colours and style couldn't possible have looked bridal in any way.
She either had it ok okayed ( as I did with the color) by the bride or is nuts. Plus why would you wear all that hot stuff to a beach if you didn't need to.
Mind boggles.

Just reading the replies I'm gobsmacked! I'm accused of lying several times, being AI, the wedding being shit because I posted, that weddings can't take place on beaches. But at least I now now that it's fully acceptable to wear a wedding dress at a wedding!

I didn't take a photograph. The woman presumably would recognise herself if she saw it. She had gone home by the time I went back to the reception in any case.

I can assure everyone who thinks this isn't true that had I wanted to tell a lie on Mumset I'm capable of thinking up something a bit better than that!

At my wedding my best friend wore an outfit that would have upstaged Beyonce, and my ex-MIL wore a very pale cream. I didn’t give a monkeys: they weren’t the ones walking down the aisle, and I thought they both looked fabulous.

Although we are now divorced, I still love my ex-MIL.

Why would anyone do it? Because a lot of people know nothing about weddings if they haven't been to many perhaps.

Honestly, before I got married and went on wedding forums and found out more about what's commonplace, if anyone had asked me to be a bridesmaid on the assumption I would 'obviously know' I was expected to attend every dress shopping expedition, be really involved in wedding planning and to sort out a hen weekend for a dozen people in Aiya Napa or whatever, I would have got in such trouble. I assumed the bridesmaids just got bought a dress and had to turn up on the day and look worse than the bride.

Obviously, not every bride expects super involved bridesmaids and most will communicate upfront what they want. But I see online a lot of arguments about being a bridesmade that seem to come from exactly this misalignment of expectation. So I think it's possible a first time guest could just make an error about what you're supposed to wear.

I’ll preface this with I’m not a wedding person and have zero idea of the “rules” that are apparently just common knowledge (exactly how one gains this knowledge nobody can ever explain to me) but these thread always astound me.

As far as I can tell these rules only apply to women and men can all wear matching or similar suits etc and that’s fine. But what I have learned so far from MN in terms of weddings is:

Women must not, as a wedding guest, wear the same colour as the bride. Even if we don’t know in advance what colour that is. We must not wear white because it has a recent association with women getting married in the UK (very recent, white is in no way traditional). We must not wear red because it indicates a scandal. We must not wear green because it means jealousy or is bad luck. Or black because it indicates mourning and is associated with funerals. We must not wear pale colours lest it is mistaken for white, not lace in case the brides dress has lace, nor white background patterns because of photos. No styling that might be mistaken for a wedding dress (such styling is found in a large percentage of formal wear) Also not formal enough to wear separates, and entirely frowned upon to choose anything someone might interpret as showy or with too much leg or cleavage.

Now I learn we also cannot wear pink or ball gowns.

I have worn pretty much all of above to weddings in the past including white, and including wearing the same colour as the bride, and realise I have lived my life in a perpetual state of faux pas. And yet nobody has seemed concerned and all my friends are still talking to me and most of them am still invited me to their second and third weddings so I can’t have annoyed them too much.

Please do tell me how we are supposed to intuit these mad rules and even better do tell why they only apply to women and why they only apply at the one specific social occasion of a wedding?

No pictures, yet, OP?

Yes, I believe I made that clear in my post!
I 'noticed' because of what the other guests told me.

So, you did know what one of your guests was wearing!

The only time I’ve commented on another guest’s wedding attire was where the bride’s cousin wore a white suit. Not because it was white, but because she wore no top or bra under the jacket, and I don’t think many of the people present escaped without seeing her tits. Including the vicar.

I often wonder how bored the bride must be on her wedding day to notice everyone else's outfit!
I have been married years now but even at the time I couldn't have recalled what my guests were wearing except for the one rather large woman that wore a white vest top (the £2.50 from Primark kind) with a pair of black cropped leggings and black ballerina shoes-she has lived rent free in my head for a long time, not because she ruined anything but because all of the other guests were talking about her for all of the wrong reasons!!! A pink ott ballgown type think might have been preferable.......

Actually that was how it used to be before the craziness took over weddings.

“Hardly any places in the UK”

apart from the whole of Scotland 🙄

You can in Scotland. You can get married pretty much anywhere you like in Scotland.

I don’t think I’ve been to a wedding where 100% of my time I was dazzled by the entertainment and unable to do anything else?

Why would it be a shit wedding because OP accessed her phone?