Mother of groom wearing cream?

[Waasitwroong]

I went wedding dress shopping on Saturday and took my mum, my partner's mum and a bridesmaid.

We chose the dress and then partner's mum declared she would be wearing cream to the wedding.

I feel taken aback that she'd do this and upon reflection now feel that I need to change my own dress choice to something that makes more of a statement, compared to the more understated and timeless dress I have chosen.

AIBU?
No - wearing cream to someone else's wedding is inappropriate.
Yes - get over it.

My Mum wore an ivory coloured suit to my wedding. She is the least attention seeking person I know so definitely wasn't done in any attempt to upstage me. It was just a really lovely outfit and suited her. It never occurred to me until I saw your post that anyone could be annoyed by this. But then I did get married over twenty years ago and I think people were less precious then.

The groom's mother wore a long, cream dress at the last wedding I went to. Nobody thought she was the bride but from the whispering I heard amongst the guests there were plenty of people who thought she was a bit daft!
Wear what you want, and what you feel comfortable in OP, and have a lovely day.

People who think a guest would be wearing white or cream as a deliberate dig have serious main character syndrome!

If a guest actually realised it was a social faux pas then they would always realise that it makes them look like a dick (to some people) not the bride.

The world would be a happier place without these ridiculous rules and just letting things that really really really don’t matter go.

So interesting. I don’t think there’s anything wrong at all with the photos on this thread! And I can’t see what’s “rude” about wearing cream as a woman who’s likely to be 50/60/70+. It’s the most bland, generic colour and a woman that age is hardly going to compete with an actual bride 😂.

I think this is just one of those unwritten rules that some people have. I don’t think logic or reason come into it - but people certainly do seem to get hot under the collar about it!

Just tell your MIL the dress code is no white or cream for anyone but the bride.

This - [assuming it is a solid/plain cream suit, not a floral affair on a cream background, which would be fine] I would approach her and say ‘I understand that you are thinking of cream, but given I will be wearing white/ivory and the bridesmaids’ dresses/flowers are XX coloured, I’m a little worried that cream may clash against the dress and colour scheme in the photos? Perhaps even look a little ‘old’/aging, when X and Y colours would look amazing?’

(Cream next to white can be really jarring and make the cream look a bit ick, IMHO.)

While she is acting in bad taste, I would just go with the dress you initially wanted, as no one is going to mistake her for the bride, and nor would you be upstaged. If anything, anyone that noticed her will just think she is a complete dick.

No you wouldn’t. Mine wore a cream suit - perhaps she shouldn’t have, but she was panicking about finding something she liked that fitted and when that skirt suit fitted she bought it. So it was not done to try to make some kind of point.

I mean I might remember a batshit Mother of The Groom wearing cream but for all the wrong reasons!

YANBU OP but I wouldn’t say anything. Maybe tell your partner and if he feels he can say anything; that would be better.

You will look lovely, she will look crazy. If you have a photographer, brief them in advance and ask them to try and avoid her where possible… 😅

Its distasteful and deliberate of future MIL and she knows it!
Don't change your dress though, wear what you want to, its YOUR day!
Everyone with an ounce of respect will take one look at your MIL with the disgust that she deserves.
Good luck marrying into this OP; she's giving you a snippet of the narcissist that she is ..... 😬😬

My MIL wore a cream dress to our wedding and it was fine. Everyone at our wedding knew exactly who we were and no one managed to mistake her as the bride!

Etiquette rules are what they are.

It's not the done thing to wear white or cream to a wedding. Some people don't know the etiquette, some people ignore the etiquette.

Well lots of people in this thread have ignored it and haven’t blown up their entire family or ended up in jail 🤷🏻‍♀️

So it’s clearly not the apocalyptic decision some in this thread think it is. Perhsps people have more pressing things going on in their lives 🤔

From what you wrote, you have ever reason to be put out. At the very least, she should have checked with you first.

I would not change YOUR dress for YOUR wedding if you found the dress you love. I would, however, have a talk either directly with your MIL or with your partner about how this makes you feel, especially since it is well known that you don't wear white to a wedding and she didn't check first. More and more wedding dresses are ivory, so ivory, white, and cream all fall into the same bucket for me.

Etiquette?? 😂 Please.

On Mumsnet, everyone’s knee deep in Debrett’s it seems.

I’m picturing the poster as Miss Havisham, still rattling around in her own little world, where the done thing is practically a religion and the greatest sin imaginable is stepping outside the boundaries of what’s deemed acceptable

Exactly. It’s just absurd.

Don’t change your dress, don’t stress on what she wears, no way will she outshine you! My bridesmaids actually wore cream and it was (to me) so beautiful to have the wedding party in such a light colour, plenty of people opt for champagne/very pale bridesmaid colours, you could do that too to knock the wind out of it! You will be a gorgeous bride and the focus will be all on you!

I suspect the OP is never coming back to this thread 🤔🙄

So you don't say please or thank you then? After all, it's just etiquette. No one will die and the word won't blow up if no one bothers anymore.

Is shunning someone or calling them unkind names for wearing cream at a wedding polite then?
Is that good etiquette?

The best man's girlfriend wore a cream dress to my wedding, and she was about my age, so I really don't know why you're worried about a woman who is presumably decades older than you wearing a cream outfit.
Didn't Princess Kate wear a cream suit to H/M wedding (sorry for mentioning them, but my point is that even experts in etiquette clearly think it's ok).
I feel sorry for you if you're genuinely upset about it-does she look especially young, and is her outfit exactly like a wedding dress? Do you really think she's going to be mistaken for the bride? Because no one made that mistake at my wedding even though the gf was the same age as me. I might have thought it was odd if it was an actual wedding dress, but it wasn't, so no one was bothered at all.
You should have asked her to get something else if it's really bothering you, or is it a symptom of something else? Sometimes when people get upset about little things, there's a real issue they need support with (not a clinical psychologist, but I do know one, who said things like this when people got upset over something no one else even noticed).

We don't say "please" and "thank you" because of etiquette 😮. We say it to express gratitude before and after a thing.

People get so hung up on rules, never actually stopping to think what they're for.

We use soup spoons because it's cleaner to drink soup out of that shaped spoon bowl than a dessert spoon or tablespoon, nobody wants to sit at a table dribbling soup down their front or watching other people do the same. It's not just a random made-up rule by the Soup Spoon Manufacturers' Association. There's no call anymore (now that baking technology has moved on) for cake forks - no reason to use them any more. Do if you want, but you really don't have a leg to stand on picking on others for wanting to drop a pointless rule and use a normal table fork.

Once upon a time, when ALL women wore floor length dresses and nothing but, only the bride wore white because anyone else wearing a floor length white dress could indeed have been mistaken for the bride. Nowadays, the equivalent would be to not wear a wedding dress-eque dress. Why not wear a white or cream trouser suit, or shift dress, or knee-length skirt and blazer?

Having rules for the sake of "etiquette" is like having an opinion on other people calling a toilet a lavatory instead of a loo. It's completely arbitrary and betrays a particularly small mind (imho).

I wouldn’t be bothered but if you are then ask
the photographer to arrange the shot so she is sitting or behind someone 😉