'Smart' and 'Smart Casual' Dress Codes?

[KateGarrulous]

Help please!

I am attending a one day conference in a very nice country house hotel, with an evening dinner and an overnight stay. The dress code has been given as 'smart casual' for day and 'smart' for the evening dinner.

I was thinking of a printed day/ tea dress with cardi, opaques and boots for the day- do you think this would be ok?

However after googling i'm struggling to understand how dressy the 'smart' dress code is as 'smart' seems to vary between business, day and evening events. How dressy do you think this needs to be for an evening dinner -i.e is it a cocktail type dress? I would wear a LBD but i don't have one just now. I have a phase eight dress i wore to a wedding which i was thinking of wearing. Its a silky taupe coloured fabric, so not too light a colour, and it has a matching knitted bolero, slingbacks and clutch bag.

Am I barking up the wrong tree? If so what sort of thing do you think i should wear?
TIA!

Smart casual just means no denim, no tears, flip flops, reef shoes, vests. Smart I'd interpret as business wear.

After a long list of dos and don't issued by Dh's company on dress codes, dh felt it all came down to men taking their ties off for smart casual and keeping them on for smart and for woman, he thought maybe taking your jacket off for smart casual or wearing a jumper! Given it was all down to interpretation he decided it was safer to look a bit smarter, than a bit scruffier, than everyone else.

I think what you've described sounds fine...not sure about the bolero though....you don't want to look like you are going to a wedding.