All About the Mother of the Bride (& Groom!)
This one’s for the moms! Even though a wedding day is for your son or daughter, it’s very much so about you, too! You’ve probably spent months planning and years praying over and thinking about this day. We know how difficult it can be to find a dress. It feels super overwhelming — you want to look incredible, but feel comfortable. Sometimes you have to choose a specific color or don’t like a certain style on your body. Unfortunately, few designers focus on this niche. You want to look fab, but not like you’re trying to look too young — also don’t want to look matronly either. We GET IT! Soooo, our mom helped us put together a mini edit of MOB/MOG dresses we think check all the boxes — and we’re including some lessons she learned from selecting her dress for Elson’s wedding. If you want our full attention, book an Event Styling session (‘The Fran’) with us and we will help you style a head to toe look for your upcoming wedding.
MONI’S ADVICE
Start looking for your dress early.
Being totally honest with you, finding a MOB dress can seriously take some time. It’s not a niche that many designers focus on, so styles don’t feel fresh that often. It may take you longer than expected to find a dress — and that’s OKAY. But make sure you start early to account for that time. And you can of course enlist our help to make it go a bit faster.
Get your dress altered early.
It may not be this way for every city, but we’ve noticed that at least in Birmingham, getting clothes altered is starting to take longer and longer. The art of altering clothes seems to be dying and turnaround times aren’t as fast as they used to be to be. Make sure to take your dress to your alterations specialist months in advance of the wedding.
Make sure that you feel 100% comfortable in your dress.
This one’s obvious, but super important. Whether you like it or not, people will be looking at you! You’ll most likely walk down the aisle at the wedding, and you don’t want to be pulling, tugging, or feel icky in your dress. Walk around in it and take photos + videos of yourself in the dress before you decide.
Know what photographs well.
Saturated colors tend to photograph well. First, know what colors flatter your own coloring, and then second, choose a saturated color that will show up well in photos. Basically, you don’t want to choose a muted color — pastels are sometimes fine, but make sure you know how the shade photographs, blues, greens, and yellows are typically better than soft pinks and silvers. Be careful with patterns…really think about how the pattern will show up on camera.
Invest in comfortable shoes.
Nothing can put you in a horrible mood like an uncomfortable heel. The beauty of a long dress is that you can choose a slightly less fabulous heel for the sake of comfort… and honestly to us, that’s worth it.
The edit
My dress was by Jovani and I got it from the Clothestree in Vestavia Hills! We worked with Tori there, and she’s amazing.
Above is a Mother of the Groom who we helped style for her son’s wedding last Summer! The wedding was a Desert | Western vibe in Utah, so we helped her select this fun yellow dress from STAUD — isn’t she stunning!? This is also a great example of what we mean by selecting a saturated color. Saturated doesn’t mean your dress has to be dark. This bright yellow shade is saturated and showed up so perfect in her photos.
Xx,
Poema Clothiers
