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

[Bulbsbulbsbulbs]

Afternoon wedding, on a beach. Bride in traditional wedding dress, guests mostly in smart normal wedding attire.

One guest was in a wedding dress. A proper, full on wedding dress. Strapless, corset back, full length, big full skirt with a TRAIN.

The bride had asked guests not to wear white and it wasn't white but bloody hell, who would do that? She looked amazing in it but I simply can't understand the thought process. I've no idea who she was other than a friend of the bride, close enough to go to the hen night, but I'm pretty sure the bride wouldn't have said this dress was OK if she'd been asked. She wasn't a bridesmaid, literally just a guest with no other role to play at the wedding( unless she's going to step up and sing Don't Cry For Me Argentina at the reception later which is possible I suppose!)

I'm just gobsmacked that someone would do this.

@Bulbsbulbsbulbs if it makes you feel any better I once got accused of being a troll/lying years ago on here because I said I was going to the supermarket soon and it was a Sun night. They said supermarkets were closed and so I was lying...they were definitely open in Scotland where we don't have the same Sunday trading laws!!

Some people just live in their own bubble and can't accept that things they have never experienced personally can happen!

No, as I said in my post, afternoon. There was an evening reception as well but the person in question didn't stay for that.

Was it that wedding where the bride’s brother turned up in a wedding dress? If not, I’d have asked her why she was wearing it.

Well then, that is a bit odd. Im guessing either she quite literally didn't have a clue about what to wear, or she's a bit eccentric and thought something glamorous would fit the tone of a special occasion.

I think it very much depends on the type of wedding. I wore a long gold dress for my Sisters wedding. There were loads of people similarly dressy. None of us would in any way have been competing with the bride.

It definitely does depend on the wedding. In some US weddings apparently the dress code is more evening wear/black tie than smart day wear which the norm for the average UK wedding so the Gwyneth Paltrow dress might fit that theme.

I got married in 2004 and loads of my friends wore white/cream/pale yellow, and attended many weddings in the late 1990s and 2000s and wore white and black quite often, as did many other guests so the "don't wear white" was never a thing as far as we were concerned then. Though we'd have definitely avoided an actual bridal gown or something which may make you look like one of the bridesmaids.

Quite, @spoonbillstretford. Only a loon would wear an obvious bridal gown to someone else‘s wedding, and that was the original nature of the faux pas. Now people turn themselves inside out trying to make the case that since modern brides don’t always wear obvious bridal gowns, all potential wedding guests need to avoid swathes of otherwise perfectly acceptable clothing on the off chance the bride might wear something similar. In reality, if a bride is non-traditional in her choice of dress, the idea she’ll be judging a guests’ cream trousers is pretty fanciful.

People’s views of what is suitable for wedding guests to wear has changed a great deal in my lifetime (I’m in my 60s). Unless I was particularly asked to do so, I would never wear anything long, anything white/off white or anything black to a wedding. Other than that I don’t have any rules.

When I first started going to weddings, no wedding guest (bridesmaids excepted) would have worn anything long. The focus of the day was the actual wedding and the reception, rather than the evening do. Indeed, many weddings (including mine) didn’t have evening dos at all. Women therefore wore smart day wear, with hats, rather than long dresses, which would have been considered evening wear.

Similarly, men wore lounge suits (or morning suits if they had them and it was a particularly smart wedding) rather than dinner jackets.

These days it often seems that people dress more for the evening party, so long dresses and dinner jackets are more common.

Apparently it's quite normal in China....

Why are people posting ‘it depends on the type of wedding’?. On the 9th page of the thread, when the OP literally started her very first post with ‘it’s an afternoon wedding on a beach’.

Are people saying they need to know what type of afternoon wedding on a beach?

You know, it doesn’t actually kill you if you agree with an OP in AIBU.

It isn’t capitalised. it’s in bold font!

A perfectly reasonable one, given cultural differences. Having recently attended a funeral in Barbados (best friend’s Mum) followed by one in Cumbria (my own mother), my Bajan friend and I were both struck by the differences. It is possible to acknowledge these without it being a problem!

The corset and the train sound like they definitely make it a bit more over the top but the dress in the photo would actually be fine for some weddings in the US. For a black tie, evening wedding, it would likely be on the dressier side but still appropriate. I had a black tie wedding myself and some of the women wore full ballgowns. They looked beautiful, not out of place, and as the bride, I appreciated the thought they put into their dress choices for the evening. Daytime wedding on the beach, though? No. Absolutely not 😂

Maybe you didn't see her later because she was asked to go home and change?

It really doesnt suprise me, whether a guest or not. Ive seen this happen, but at a funeral... women turning up like its fancy dress, nobody knows. So disrespectful, not only that, sitting in seats as well meant for the family. As for that women turning up in a wedding dress, no matter the colour, it is also disrespectful and should have been told to leave.

A friend of mine wore a dress like that one Gwyneth is in but in gold to my wedding 🤣🙄