There’s a lot to take into account when picking your dress as a wedding guest: Is the wedding inside or outside? What season is it? Is there a dress code? But perhaps the most important consideration is the color of the dress. Some couples take an extremely hands-on approach to their guests’ attire, offering mood boards, palettes, and other guidelines, while others prefer to let their nearest and dearest follow their hearts.
But there is (almost) always one unbreakable rule for wedding-guest dresses. Say it with me now: Never. Wear. White! (Or cream, or ecru, or eggshell.) If could be misinterpreted as bridal, it’s off-limits.
Yet that edict leaves ultra-pale pastels like baby blue, cotton candy pink, and butter yellow in a sartorial No Man’s Land. Does it matter that they’re not white if they photograph with barely a whisper of color? On TikTok, innocuous creators have accidentally stirred up spirited debates over wedding-guest dresses—and celebrities aren’t immune to the discourse, either. Over the weekend, Sydney Sweeney attended Glen Powell’s sister’s wedding in Texas, where, during one event, she posed for a picture with the bride, Leslie. The shot, which circulated online, shows the actor in a pale blue dress with a sheer corset.
Sweeney soon caught flak for the look, with some social media users deeming it too close to white for the occasion. Others, however, rushed to the actor’s defense, pointing out that perhaps Leslie didn’t care—as evidenced by her ear-to-ear grin.
The same subject stirred up a lively debate in the Vogue Slack channel. Below, writers Emma Specter and Hannah Jackson discuss their opposing points of view on pale wedding-guest dress etiquette.
Hannah Jackson: Emma, I was kind of surprised to hear that we had different takes on this. Can you tell me a bit about your stance on wearing light blue (or any pale color) to a wedding?
Emma Specter: Hannah, I don’t know if you’ve arrived at the wedding-season portion of your life yet (you are quite famously slightly younger than me), but as someone who has spent more money than I care to celebrate on other people’s nuptials recently…I am coming out on the side of “Let me wear what I want as long as it’s not literally a white gown.” It’s hard enough to find a non-ugly wedding-guest dress; why put more restrictions on it? I am very open to being wrong about this, though, so tell me: What’s your argument against pale dresses at a wedding?
