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

These alleged rules only exist in the strangled confines of mumsnet. Where a grandiose minority seek to apply a convoluted set of rules & norms to social situations. Deeming anyone who won’t acquiesce to their constrictive demands as thick as pigshit.
Meanwhile is real life there are no such rules, and no self appointed harridans to impose their rules

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?

At my wedding one woman, a colleague I couldn't stand but who was going out with a friend so I had to invite, wore a white lacy dress but tried to get away with it by adding colourful stockings. Dick.

I once attended a wedding where the MOB wore a full length white dress with a veil. 😲

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?

Actually I came home in the 'down time' photos etc. I posted because I was just so surprised by it.

And of course I can't take a photo of a stranger and post it on the internet!!! Christ. But she looks a bit like this, without the straps and with a train.
share.google/T8zR5bPLk7WHlVaWi

What colour was it? Sounds like a ballgown?

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.

Other end of the scale, could it be someone who's never been to a wedding and thinks you're supposed to wear something like that? I never went to a wedding until I was in my 20s, maybe she looked up 'wedding outfit ideas' and barked up totally the wrong tree?

must be a shit wedding if your on your phone!!!!!!!!!!!!!

“Hardly any places in the UK”

apart from the whole of Scotland 🙄

Black women don’t generally wear floor length wedding dresses with trains to other people’s weddings either, in my experience…

Black women don’t generally wear floor length wedding dresses with trains to other people’s weddings either, in my experience…

Are you outside the UK OP? There are as far as I know hardly any places in the UK where you can actually get married on the beach itself (Lusty Glaze in Cornwall is one I know of) so if it's in the UK you might have given away what wedding you're at and roughly where you live. If you're outside the UK obviously there are no such worries.

Miss Havisham not from the book, I'm guessing. The traditional appearance is definitely not that .
Perhaps they've gone back in time, before she was jilted?
When people refer to "Miss Havisham" they generally mean the woman stuck in time, in her old, ragged dress.

Is this a white people wedding and is the guest also white?