What We Wear Wednesday, 3: bridezilla

Because the nature of my work demands that I stand up in front of people, and because I ask them to open their empathic channels to my influence, I think carefully about what I wear.  The result is a great deal of opinions about what conductors and people in general should wear.  My wedding anniversary recently passed, and I just sang at a friend's wedding next week, so I've been thinking about wedding attire and how it differs from performance attire.

I've been to lots of weddings as a guest and as a mercenary performer, and almost all of them have had a bride in a white ball gown and a groom in a tuxedo, regardless of the time of day.  As I have posted before,  the origin of the tuxedo is as dinner attire, for after 6 p.m.,  Full-skirted, constructed-bodiced ball gowns and really white-tie area, though they might also pass for black tie.

Before anyone gets mad that I'm telling them they wore the wrong thing to their wedding, I need to add that, of course, I think brides should wear whatever makes them happy!  I have a guess that most affianced couples wish to make their wedding special, outstanding from everyday life, so they put on formal attire for that reason--old rules be damned since the rules of formal dress are no longer important nor even known to most of us.  All brides I know have done it, and they always look beautiful and special on their big days, and I celebrate that with great joy. 

But I enjoy rules, and I wear formal attire all the time for my job, so I felt no compulsion to put on my work uniform for my wedding, you know?  Nor did I wish to force my husband to wear his tuxedo on a Saturday morning when he wears it twenty times a year to perform in.  Thus, since it is not, strictly speaking, appropriate to wear a formal gown in the morning, I wore this:

I did wear shoes at the ceremony, but not long thereafter.  The reception was at my house (mostly on my front porch), so I figured shoes were optional.  It was a Saturday morning, when morning attire is appropriate--which is why there is such a thing as a morning coat, which British men still wear for morning weddings if movies and t.v. are to be believed.  Americans weren't unfamiliar with morning coats, as attested-to by Mr. Class himself, Fred Astair, who couldn't be using it as a costume if he didn't expect people to know what it is.

But because my husband and I are both conductors who wear formal attire all the time, "special" for us meant sans black tie.

On a side note, I also wore this dress on Easter Sunday that same year, two months before the wedding.  I say this in evidence that "cocktail" is a flexible level of formality with many applications beyond actual cocktail parties, and also to soapbox for a moment about my constitutional objection to buying anything that I intend only to wear once.  The environmental and economic wastefulness of such a notion baffles me.  Again, all brides I know have done it, and they always look beautiful and special on their big days, and I celebrate that with great joy. Still--and I hate to be saying this in June, when so many wedding occur--I have to admit that I don't get it.  

Anyway. 

 I would never wear this dress to perform in (at church I wore a choir robe over it during the services).  Why not?  It's certainly formal enough for a matinee, which most of my concerts these days are.  But it's sleeveless, which I've heard some conductors say is distracting to the performers, and it also feels not professional.  There might be circumstances when I'd conduct in something sleeveless, but that would be the exception rather than the rule.  Also, the floral pattern is awfully big and poofy.  Again, not professional, and also visually distracting.  

So what would I wear?  I'll have to cover that separately.