To DoC, Or Not DoC… The Tribulations of Wedding Dressing

2 CommentsThursday • April 4, 2013 • by Verity

Wedding season is fast approaching, which means the quest for appropriate one-dress-fits-all has begun in earnest. I’ve ventured into several occasion-appropriate high street outfitters – with which there is nothing exactly wrong, but with which I usually fail to find very much right. Which has got me thinking (a la Carrie Bradshaw), why does ‘wedding’ cause me to abandon all of my usual – not L. K. Bennett-esque – taste? It’s as if on receipt of invitation, I morph into a hybrid of Princess Kate and some poor victim’s sister from the set of Midsomer Murders. I don’t do pastels or Ascot or sequinned stoles, so why on God’s earth am I suddenly fondling them appraisingly? (Not Ascot. I understand one can’t fondle Ascot)…

I’ve thought and thought as to why this taste-overhaul takes place and can only attribute it to the desire to look like a ‘grown up’ – an aesthetic which invariably escapes me IRL*

Someone else’s wedding offers the perfect excuse to play at looking ‘smart’, ‘genteel’ and ‘accomplished’. The sort of woman who can visit her effortless wardrobe and opt for some elegant (un-scuffed) heels and a tickety-boo piece of matching millinery. I am not this woman and, just as I’m not French/ginger/both, there is very little hope of me ever becoming so…

Therefore, I subconsciously revel in the opportunity to play at being someone other. In a pristine pair of cream patent court shoes (shudder), I can take a holiday from humdrum and imagine I’m Holly Golightly or Jacqueline O (sort of).

The only downside (aside from the opposite of getting my money’s worth) is the risk of accidentally channelling Mrs D–to-the-o-to-the-C. I don’t EVER want to look like one of those girls who scours the side bar of shame for fashspiration; scampering to Orla Kiely to buy the coat dress K-Mid wore to launch a lifeboat in Abersoch. There’s looking groomed then there’s tan tights which – although I’ve contemplated – I have not yet succumbed to the dubious allure of.

I want to look polished not princess-worthy. Easy in theory yet, when surrounded by nude, leg-lengthening footwear is a hard line not to (very demurely) step over.

When does wedding dressing become Kate Middleton dressing and how do I avoid looking like a wannabe? Obviously, I could stay true to my everyday apparel but where’s the excitement (or semblance of chic) in that? I want to veer firmly towards the sexy side of sophisticated and am so far, failing with considerable aplomb.

Perhaps I just won’t brush my hair. Surely bed hair beats neutral footwear in the anti-DoC ‘Wedding Special’ game of Top Trumps… it HAS to.

*In Real Life

 

Posted in: STYLE, Uncategorized

Tagged with: carrie bradshaw, Hat, Holly Golightly, Kate Middleton, L. K. Bennett, Princess, Wedding