When I spoke to Brenda last week, we also got to talking about wedding outfits. Not for the bridal party, which we are planning separately, but for the family. Grab a cuppa whilst we flick through the catalogue together.
Brenda mentioned a tradition she encountered when attending a wedding of her close family friends: the mother of the bride wears blue, and the mother of the groom wears pink, and asked if there was anything like that in England that she should be aware of when she came to get her own outfit. I'd never heard of the above tradition -- that wedding had a bride from "the South" (of the USA). It's kind of its own country, in the way that "the North" of England is kind of its own country too. But no, there's nothing like that here.
My Mum has already bought her outfit - the full outfit. Shoes, bag, fascinator, the lot. This is because, before we had a wedding date, we had thought that maybe, once we got a date, we would move really quickly -- 6 weeks, 8 weeks, 12 weeks maximum, kind of timing. So we were laying the plans in rough draft so they were all ready to go-go-go when the time came.
So Mum has bought her outfit, and it looks lovely. I haven't seen it on yet, but it looks good on the hanger. I hope she won't mind me telling you, it's cream with black accenting. She didn't have the fascinator yet when Brenda and I spoke.
Brenda was asking me about the dress code. Obviously it's a wedding, so "fancy" is appropriate. She asked about hats and fascinators. Mum really does not have a hat face, which is why I thought she'd get a fascinator. She'd been trying different ones on in a few different places, but I think Brenda will get a hat. Maybe a big hat. I didn't tell her this, but I think a blue will look great on Brenda. I hope she finds something great!
(Sidebar: family friends of my own once had to fly to Italy for their daughter's wedding, and she -- Mother -- had a massive hat that needed its own seat. The Italian airport on the way back was actually considerably less perplexed by the idea of paying for an extra seat for the hat, than the British airport were for the journey out there.)
Oh, and Mum bought her fascinator the day after this conversation; she walked past a stall in the shopping centre that she'd never seen before and they had the EXACT fascinator she wants, right there. The EXACT same shade of cream as the shoes (that are just a smidgeon lighter than the dress), it was cream edged in black and not black edged in cream, like she needed, and was of the clippy variety, seeing as Mum had tried various headband styles and found they hurt her ears.
Things like that happen to Mum a lot. She grabbed a scarf and paid for it quickly in a shop in Amsterdam when they were on a river cruise and her coat let in a draught. They only had a few minutes before the boat left again, and she couldn't have picked a colour closer to the colour of her coat if she'd spent three months looking. When she and my stepdad were getting married, the first cake shop they went into had the exact cake that she wanted as one of the displays. They tried to offer to change the shape of the cake, the number of tiers, the shape or colour of the protruding decorations, and it took five times to tell them that she wanted a copy of that cake, exactly as it was.
We finally also set a date for the four-way calling, so I wonder if Mum will show Brenda her outfit then?
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