What to Wear to a Wedding: Guide for Women

If you’ve been invited to a wedding, it’s both a blessing and a curse. It’s an opportunity for a great party and an excuse to dress up. But it’s also stressful because you have to find the perfect outfit. Finding the right outfit for you depends on a lot of factors.

How Formal Is the Wedding?

You can look at our wedding wear guide for men for a discussion about how to determine how formal the wedding is. Here’s a ranking of women’s outfits from least formal to most formal:

• Short dress

• Suit

• Short cocktail dress

• Long cocktail dress

Colors contribute to the formality of the dress. Black is considered more formal than a colorful dress. Solids are more formal than prints.

Never Wear White

This is a rule that you might think is gone, but it’s very much alive. White is a color reserved for the bride, and it’s rude to compete with her on her special day. There are lots of options for what color you should wear—it’s easy to pick something else.

What’s Appropriate?

Make sure you’re not wearing anything too overtly sexy. You want to look pretty, but not risqué. Anything that’s see-through or too low-cut is just not appropriate for a wedding, unless you get an explicit go-ahead from the bride’s mom. Yeah, this is one place where the mom matters more. A wedding is a family event, and it’s best to defer to the family when it comes to this standard.

Definitely Dress Up

When going to a wedding, anything that’s everyday attire for you is definitely suspect, unless you’re the kind of person that dresses up every day. A wedding is a special occasion, and show honor for that in your attire.

You Can Always Ask

As we told the men, why stress over a question that you can easily answer simply by asking? Contact the bride or someone who is close to the bride that you know. You’ll learn what’s the right thing to wear.

When in Doubt

If you’re not sure what to wear, you can always fall back on a suit that’s appropriate for the season or a soft floral dress in the summer. For an evening wedding, a little black dress will pretty much always work. Bring a few accessories to dress it up or down and you’ll be fine.

At Stonebrook Manor, we have a lot of experience with making weddings perfect. If you are planning your wedding and want to talk to us, please contact us today for a tour of our Denver wedding venue.