To dress 6 year old dd in a bridesmaid type dress to a wedding

[Notthinkingclearly]

Dd is 6 and has always loved the beautiful frothy dresses in shops designed as bridesmaid dresses. We are going to a family wedding in a few weeks and I spotted a beautiful dress from john Lewis in a charity shop for £10. Very similar currently selling for £60. I bought her a cheap pink bollero cardigan to wear over the top. It is cream with a bow at the back. Now worried that I will offend the bride as I guess it was designed as a bridesmaid dress but I just thought it would be a chance for dd to wear a proper princess type dress.. I don't even know who she has as bridesmaids as I don't know her very well and would never have expected her to ask dd. Should I let dd wear the dress?

I wouldn't mind at all, But we had a very relaxed wedding!

Check with the bride. But i think usually 6 yr olds can wear gorgeous dresses without being a bridesmaid !!

Oh this wedding malarkey is stressful and that's just reading about them.

I'm going to make everyone wear a bridesmaid dress at mine.

I would totally let her wear it. My girls have loads of gorgeous dresses mostly from my mum, and bought from charity shops, that they have no opportunity to wear as most of the kids parties they get invited to are at soft play or swimming or woodland wildlife parks etc. If we ever got invited to a wedding that would be absolutely their only chance to wear "for real" their lovely dresses. Some are definitely bridesmaidy I suppose but also just lovely party dresses.
Since we don't get invited to any weddings (sob), if we ever get an invite I will probably let them take a suitcase and change their dress every hour :-D
Similarly, people who are saying dress it down... why? Weddings are one of the only occasions we have to dress UP! Why should a little girl have to wear trainers not party shoes?

I really can't see why anyone would have a problem with a little girl's dress. As others have said, being a bridesmaid involves walking down the aisle, carrying flowers, being in the photos, matching with the rest of the bridal party etc. A little girl in a fancy dress will be doing none of this.

Graysanalogy When? When will she have a chance to wear it some other time? Most people I know are already married, and those that got married since I've had kids had child-free weddings. Weddings are pretty much the ONLY time a little girl would get to wear a really super-fancy dress. I would expect all little girls at any wedding to be wearing lovely dresses. In fact, if one was wearing a pretty but ordinary cotton sundress, to be perfectly honest, I'd think that's a shame they didn't bother to put her in a proper party dress.

Obviously according to this thread I'm weird. Do other people and their kids get invited to formal social occasions frequently?

Stealth Bridesmaids

I have heard it all now.

What is it about weddings? It's just a day.

YANBU OP.

I woudnt ask the bride as it puts her on the spot. Pretty unfair.
It's clearly unreasonable to dress a child likes bridesmaid if she isn't one. There's a big difference between party dress and bridesmaid dress in terms of colour, fabric design etc

You're wanting approval that the bride will feel obliged to give you if asked. People will notice and think it's wierd! She will look like a flower girl given no other flower girls have been chosen.

I'd actually be mortified to do this. It seems pretty desperate

To add I actually wouldn't buy a bridesmaid dress for any other reason than bridesmaid or dress up - sorry but it's odd. Bridesmaid and communion dresses are so obvious when you see them

I disagree that party dresses are very different than bridesmaids dresses aged 6. They are usually pink, white, cream, have nets, shiny bits on them, maybe flowery. I have seen tonnes of girls at parties in such dresses at this age, in fact, when else would they wear them except parties and weddings?

I honestly cannot imagine anyone caring about a cute 6 year old in a lovely dress. I've been to loads of weddings without official bridesmaids and the children dress up in this type of stuff.

Honestly ivory cream and white are clearly bridal or communion- fair enough its coincidence with other colours but do parents really buy cream and white as s party dress?! If i saw a child in a cream fancy frock at a kids party I'd totally presume it's a recycled bridesmaid dress from a family wedding

If u go in monsoon and debenhams when they have their sale on almost every party dress still available weeks on in the sale is cream or white - I think it shows people don't snap then up as a random party dress.

I actually think people must be rather obtuse/lacking social awareness if they cannot see the problem of dressing up a child as a member of the wedding party when she isn't.I don't see why it is less offensive for a 6 yr old to be dressed up as a fraud bridesmaid than anyone else.

2catsnowaiting so you are saying because your DC have never been asked to be bridesmaids, they should just rock up at the next wedding you are invited to dressed up as BMs

Please let your daughter wear the dress. Surely don't understand why some people think it would be a problem. Surely it is better that guests make an effort with their attire than turn up in something everyday? Do you even know that there will be any flower girls at the wedding? Little girls like to dress up so unless it is a massive meringue with hoops, etc I really wouldn't worry. Bring a little dress she can slip on if you really think it might become an issue although I really wouldn't have got upset at our wedding.

Sorry but no, it's a very nice bridesmaid dress but there are a million pretty party dresses for 6 year olds out there and I don't think this is the right dress for a non bridesmaid to wear

Jaamy - why do you think there are only two options - that dress or not making an effort? I've pointed out several really lovely, special-occasion dresses for not much money at all, on ebay - the OP could buy another dress for this wedding, and let her dd wear the first dress on another occasion - her birthday party, maybe, or a friend's birthday.

This is the same dress that I bought my flower girls to wear for our wedding. I've seen it before & since at other weddings. It's therefore likely that if they have flower girls, they could have this or a v similar dress. You'd look like you were wanting her to be a bridesmaid, even if you don't, especially to people you don't know. Plus the bride could be a bit miffed - it's her & her DH's big day, why risk upsetting them? Those saying the bride's feelings don't matter clearly just think about themselves when making decisions, rather than the feelings of others. Either ask in advance or choose something else, don't just rock up with her on the day wearing it.

I have been NC with my sister for seven years now as we have a difficult history going back to childhood but when I got married she asked if her DD could be BM and I said no. My wedding was very low key in a pub with little fuss and having no BM was part of the 'no fuss' theme as far as I was concerned. Sis always just does as she pleases anyway (complete narc/part of why I am NC with her) and when I arrived at the venue, she was there with her kid done up as a BM and in a dress I hated the colour of too. I had a lovely day but that bit of my sis muscling in as always is always there in the memory. She had had two weddings and had done all that but she still had to control that bit of mine. I was clear in the no BM thing too so proceed with caution OP. In that moment I wanted to tell her to take the kid away and bring her back in dungarees and BB cap but I would have looked like the bad bastard and that was what she had relied on.

But Free, you still didn't have a bmaid at your wedding.

Op, if the little boys are going to be wearing suits, I think that your daughter must wear that dress, otherwise she'll look underdressed

I'd have the opposite problem. My 4yo daughter recently attended a Christening in leggings and a top (thankfully not the wellies she also wanted to wear) She point blank refuses to wear a dress or even smart clothes 😩
She looked a mess and I was a bit embarrassed.
I think a pretty dress is fine. The bride won't even give the guests a second thought, as long as they attend and have a lovely time x

I'd bet the parents of the little boys aren't having all this angst about what to dress them in!! What if they are seen to be desperately trying to make the point that their wee darlings should have been page boys, or even worse upstage the men in the bridal party??
Best just dress them in trackies just to be sure!

But a smart suit isn't normal pageboy garb, if they were dressed as little Lord Fauntleroy or in tails with matching cravats it would be the equivalent of the bridesmaid dress. Some people are being very obtuse, or have zero social awareness.

When I was about 5 my mum bought me a very heavily reduced bridesmaids dress that I wore to birthday parties. I loved it! It was pink and floor length, very 80s however, I don't think I'd have worn it to a wedding as it was so obviously a bridesmaids dress.
Could you keep this one for parties and find something less frothy for the wedding?

Definitely let her wear it. She's a 6 year old girl, who could be offended? If she likes dressing up as lots of little girls do, then only a bridezilla would complain.

It's clearly unreasonable to dress a child likes bridesmaid if she isn't one.

Really? We are talking about a 6 year old girl here. What bride would mind? A narrow minded, bitter, controlling one.

I think people are missing the point. It's not about being cross with a 6 year old, let's face it the 6 year old has almost nothing to do with it - she's just wearing what her parents told her to wear.

That dress is a bridesmaid dress. If you go to John Lewis, Next or Monsoon those dresses are usually slightly separate from the other girls dresses because they are easily identifiable as bridesmaid dresses. That's not to say girls don't wear them to other events, but they are bridesmaid dresses none the less.

If the OP asks the bride and the bride is fine with it then there is no issue. Otherwise she risks offending the bride, not because the bride is a bridezilla but because there may be other issues that the OP is unaware of.

For example, I know a bride who has 7 nieces and choose not to have them as flower girls /bridesmaids because there were so many of them and in addition to her 3 sisters the bridal party would have been massive. She couldn't choose one or two without upsetting the others so none were. If a girl at that wedding turned up in a beautiful bridesmaid dress it would put the bride in an uncomfortable position with her nieces who could understandably be upset by it.

I've only been to one wedding where a girl (approx 5yrs) came in an ivory flower girl dress, the bride said nothing negative at the time but has commented since that people who see her photos ask her who the flower girl was. She is a little embarrassed to say she doesn't really know, it was the little girl of one of the grooms colleagues girlfriend. People just assume that girl in bridesmaid dress at a wedding = a bridesmaid.

At the wedding, people told the girl and her mum how beautiful she looked (she did) and what a pretty dress it was (it was lovely) but privately they were rolling their eyes.

I heard comments from other guests, most appeared to think that it was a weird thing to do, most assumed that the mother was trying to shoehorn the little girl into the bridal party.

Unless the bride was asked I think it shows thoughtlessness for the couple at best and attention-seeking behaviour (from the parents, not the child) at worst.

If the bride is fine with it, go for it but at least give her the chance to say no.