Bad Manners and Brimstone

The same is true about red, which people sometimes ask about -- nothing wrong with wearing an outfit that happens to be red, you're just not supposed to wear anything that looks like you are out picking up sailors!

There was a Dear Prudence letter on Slate at one point where the writer ranted about the dress her MIL-to-be was planning to wear at her wedding, and the terrible crime turned out to be that it was robin's egg blue.

No, that wasn't the colour the bridesmaids were wearing either. It was just a dress in robin's egg blue.

I can remember thinking that I could have understood if the dress was fire-engine red with a slit up the crotch to reveal matching underwear, but a blue dress hardly warranted all this kerfuffle.

I was born in the 60's and black was not to be worn to weddings. But by the 90's you were starting to see it. In '94, I was a bridesmaid where the bride selected black velveteen dresses for us. In the 2000s, I attended many weddings were guests and MOB or MOG were in black.

Now at evening weddings, I'd say at least a third of the women are dressed in black.

Back when I first began attending weddings, they were often in the early afternoon and the receptions were likely to be immediately after in the church social room.  People dressed the way they would normally dress to attend church.

As I got older and older, weddings that we attended got more and more formal and were far more likely to be held in the evening.  Then is when I noticed people starting to get really dressed "fancy" and we saw a lot more black. 

Quote from: Gellchom on October 08, 2020, 11:47:17 pm

The same is true about red, which people sometimes ask about -- nothing wrong with wearing an outfit that happens to be red, you're just not supposed to wear anything that looks like you are out picking up sailors!

There was a Dear Prudence letter on Slate at one point where the writer ranted about the dress her MIL-to-be was planning to wear at her wedding, and the terrible crime turned out to be that it was robin's egg blue.

No, that wasn't the colour the bridesmaids were wearing either. It was just a dress in robin's egg blue.

I can remember thinking that I could have understood if the dress was fire-engine red with a slit up the crotch to reveal matching underwear, but a blue dress hardly warranted all this kerfuffle.

I found it. https://slate.com/human-interest/2008/04/advice-on-manners-and-morals-april-17-2008.html

And, horrors, it was a youthful style.  On a wizened dinosaur of 51.  The bride also complained that blue wouldn’t harmonize with the champagne and sage of the wedding party and the MOB’s pink dress.  Pink was okay, though?

Loved Prudie’s answer.

I was born in the 60's and black was not to be worn to weddings. But by the 90's you were starting to see it. In '94, I was a bridesmaid where the bride selected black velveteen dresses for us. In the 2000s, I attended many weddings were guests and MOB or MOG were in black.

Now at evening weddings, I'd say at least a third of the women are dressed in black.

My friend also requested that I get a long black dress to be her Maid of Honor.

Quote

I was born in the 60's and black was not to be worn to weddings. But by the 90's you were starting to see it. In '94, I was a bridesmaid where the bride selected black velveteen dresses for us. In the 2000s, I attended many weddings were guests and MOB or MOG were in black.

Now at evening weddings, I'd say at least a third of the women are dressed in black.

That's amazing. It definitely isn't the case over here.

You’re in the UK, though, right?  And aren’t most weddings in the daytime there?  Evening is much more common here, at least in my community, so the black I’m talking about is party clothes. You’d see way less black in the US at a daytime wedding, too. 

If there is a party at night, still no black?

You’re in the UK, though, right?  And aren’t most weddings in the daytime there?  Evening is much more common here, at least in my community, so the black I’m talking about is party clothes. You’d see way less black in the US at a daytime wedding, too. 

If there is a party at night, still no black?

Bear in mind that if you hold a wedding in the U.K, unless it’s in a very remote location the majority of the guests can probably set off from their homes in the morning and get home the same night. That means they have no hotel room to change in. So if you’re planning to have dancing and a party going on till late you’ll probably have the wedding ceremony in the early afternoon, dinner in the early evening, with dancing to follow. Whatever the guests turned up wearing, they wear till they go home.

Quote from: Aleko on October 20, 2020, 09:53:57 am

Quote

You’re in the UK, though, right?  And aren’t most weddings in the daytime there?  Evening is much more common here, at least in my community, so the black I’m talking about is party clothes. You’d see way less black in the US at a daytime wedding, too. 

If there is a party at night, still no black?

Bear in mind that if you hold a wedding in the U.K, unless it’s in a very remote location the majority of the guests can probably set off from their homes in the morning and get home the same night. That means they have no hotel room to change in. So if you’re planning to have dancing and a party going on till late you’ll probably have the wedding ceremony in the early afternoon, dinner in the early evening, with dancing to follow. Whatever the guests turned up wearing, they wear till they go home.

That's the same here. I'd say most evening weddings ceremonies we attend start somewhere between 5 and 7pm before moving on to the reception. If an afternoon ceremony, then the dress code is usually more casual.

And although I know there are exceptions in some communities, it's much more common in the US, at least where I live, there is never a gap between the ceremony and the reception.  Sometimes the reception is in a different venue, but everyone immediately goes there from the ceremony.  Most common would be something like a 6:30 pm ceremony followed by a dinner reception, or 12 or 1 pm ceremony followed by a lunch or brunch reception.  Sometimes I see a 4:30 ceremony followed by a dinner reception; people wear evening clothes (and I always feel kind of funny in the car on the way there!).   But the point is, either all daytime or all evening, not a morning or early afternoon ceremony and an evening reception. 

So that may explain why black is less common in the UK; even though a black party dress is fine for an evening reception, it wouldn't be appropriate for a daytime ceremony, and a daytime black outfit is more likely to look funereal. 

Raquel Welch wore low cut black with shoulder straps to her son’s afternoon English church wedding to the daughter of a famous cricketer.

Everyone else in the pictures is wearing typical British wedding clothes with shoulders covered for church, she’s dressed for a Hollywood party.  There were *multiple* articles in the press about how inappropriately she was dressed and it was the first thing I thought about when I saw this thread.

The marriage lasted two years.

I had never heard about this so did a search and found this recent article. The bride sounds so very gracious.

https://www.express.co.uk/celebrity-news/1329039/Raquel-welch-dress-wedding-rebecca-ferrene-trueman