Wearing white to a wedding: is it ever acceptable?

Choosing an outfit to wear to a wedding can be a tricky prospect. Obviously you want to look your best but the last thing you want to do is outshine the bride, which is why many consider wearing white to be a big wedding guest no, no. But not everyone.

One soon-to-be wedding guest took to the Internet to ask advice about whether it was acceptable to wear a white dress to an evening reception she was due to attend.

“I’ve just purchased this dress for an upcoming charity event I have to attend but I am hoping it will be double up for an upcoming wedding due to the cost and I am having to have the dress altered and taken in slightly so would be nice to get more than one wear out of it,” she wrote on Mumsnet.

“It will only be the evening reception I am attending. It will be paired with black shoes and a black bag and the bottom of the dress is like a taupe colour.”

Later the user returned to the forum to share an image of the dress, which is ivory and features short sleeved in a blouson, ruffled design.

The woman took to the site to gauge opinions about whether it was acceptable to wear the dress for a wedding evening reception.

And the forum was quick to step in and offer their thoughts, with many suggesting she shouldn’t wear the dress as the only person who should be wearing white at a wedding is the bride.

“If it was any other colour it would be fine. But white to somebody else’s wedding is a no IMO,” one user wrote.

“You could wear any other colour without fear of causing offence except white. So why wear white?” another agreed.

“Absolutely not. It’s lovely, but not for a wedding. Just don’t be that person,” a third commented.

But others thought the dress might be ok, particularly if the woman teamed it with brightly coloured accessories.

“I think you could wear it to a wedding, with the right accessories,” one user suggested. “With something bold, like navy blue, the ivory colouring could be overlooked. Disclaimer: I am shite at this stuff!”

“Fine by me, the colour is OK in my book as it doesn’t look like a wedding dress at all,” another agreed. “Unless you know the bride is especially uptight (and honestly, it would take a pretty uptight bride to be upset that someone’s wearing pale-not-wedding-dress) in which case maybe avoid.”

“Yes if you wear brightly coloured or black accessories,” a third suggested. “Because otherwise it is too white. You don’t know if the bride might be wearing a short white dress… or the bridesmaids, and so it might be embarrassing if you look too much like them.

She went on to detail a similar situation on her own big day.

“Someone wore a short white lace dress to my wedding which was almost exactly the same as my bridesmaids dresses… she hadn’t done it on purpose but it looked really odd in all the photos… she looked like some nuts person who had tried to tag on the end of the bridesmaids… some older family members did have a bit of a grumble about it.”

It isn’t the only wedding dilemma people have been debating online recently. Last month a wedding guest turned to a forum to get people’s views on her sister in law’s request to pay £180 to secure their place at the wedding.

Then there was the bride who wanted to change some of her bridesmaids’ eye colours so they didn’t ‘clash’ with the colour scheme.

Next up was the couple asked wedding guests to take a fortnight off work for their destination wedding and save almost £3,000 to attend the three-day-long nuptials.

Back in December, a bride asked her wedding party to dress in a weight-based dress code with women above 160 pounds and men above 200 pounds requested to wear black or camouflage.

And let’s not forget the bride who divided the Internet by asking her guests to answer maths questions during their wedding celebrations.

Follow us on Instagram and Facebook for non-stop inspiration delivered fresh to your feed, every day. For Twitter updates, follow @YahooStyleUK.

Read more from Yahoo Style UK:

Bride kicked guests out of her wedding for bringing children

‘Bridezilla’ receives backlash on Mumsnet after bitter wedding rant

Bridesmaid fired for speaking too much about ‘silly’ chronic disease