Wedding Post : Afternoon Wedding in Summer – What to Wear ?

Most requests I get are for advice on what to wear to weddings – It seems a lot of us are confused and who can blame us ? What with morning weddings, afternoon weddings, evening weddings, summer/winter…and all the rules of etiquette(some made up, some real) – making head or tail of the whole thing can get a bit confusing  – so I decided I’m starting a series of posts on outfit ideas for the different types of weddings.

For this first post, I’m going to focus on a ‘class’ of wedding that has recently become really popular in Malta – weddings that begin early afternoon and go on until late evening; I will call them – Afternoon Weddings.

This is a tricky one and needs some thought – it largely depends on the time of year and the exact time of day – a wedding that begins at 3 p.m. in summer is different to a wedding that begins at 3 p.m in winter. In winter this timing can still be classified as an evening wedding since the larger portion of the wedding will happen at night-time but in summer the days are longer so it falls somewhere in between a morning and evening wedding. 

Since it is now Spring I will focus on afternoon weddings where the larger portion is before dusk.

For a spring/summer afternoon wedding as far as colours go I would stick to a dress in a bright rich hue, maybe a royal blue or an emerald green or a light purple colour. Avoid head-to-toe black if possible (at least inject some bright accessories) and avoid whole chunks of too-light pastel colours as this will look somewhat odd when the sun goes down. If you wish to include pastel colours then either wear pastel accessories or team a pastel dress with richer hued accessories. Patterns are a great idea for this wedding as they look great both in the morning and in the evening and can really jazz up a look. 

As regards to long dresses, long, colourful, patterned dresses look great at this kind of wedding but avoid the super formal long gala dress as these might look odd throughout the first part of the wedding.

Here is an outfit that I created that would be perfect for such a wedding (target age demographic is approx 27+) – the blue patterned dress is fun for the morning but smart for the evening, the glitzy jewellery will add some sparkle after hours.This dress is suitable for most body shapes except very large busts.