A woman who asked the internet for advice on a new dress she got to wear at a wedding has been “shocked” by the response.
Julia McGuire, 31, is a model and fashion content creator, and recently used her large online following to help her decide if a dress was appropriate to wear to a wedding.
There is a long-standing debate on what not to wear to weddings—such as being too much or too little—and the most important is to not upstage the bride, or wear something too similar to a wedding dress.
“I personally love the dress and [would not be] offended if somebody wore it to my wedding,” McGuire told Newsweek.
But, being cautious, she took to her TikTok account @juliamcguire23 on September 15, where she told followers: “NEED your opinions please.”
She then showed off a gorgeous foot-length blue-and-white-patterned strapless flowing gown, and said: “I ordered this dress for a wedding. I think it’s so beautiful, but clearly, there’s white in it.
She asked in the video: “Would you be offended if someone wore this to your wedding? I’m on the fence about it, I really want to be careful and not make a bride upset.”
TikTok users responded in a big way, with McGuire’s video racking up close to 2 million views and 77,000 likes as thousands of commenters shared their opinion on the $650 Garden of Eden corset maxi dress.
One user said there was no problem with it, “because it’s impossible to confuse this with the bride,” but another argued it was “the cut/length that makes it much too bridal for a guest.”
“I’d say anyone who got offended at a mostly blue needs to have a serious word with themselves,” one user said, but another went for the safe option: “My rule of thumb is if you’re questioning it, don’t wear it.”
And one appeared to solve the situation once and for all, writing: “Send it to the bride and ask if it’s ok to wear this dress. Problem solved.”
But, as McGuire told Newsweek: “I decided ultimately to go against wearing it as I did not know the bride well and couldn’t ask her personally,” saying she went with the idea “if you have [to] debate it, don’t wear it.”
She added: “I do think the dress is stunning and I’ll just have to find a different time to wear it.”
The average cost of a wedding dress was around $2,000, according to wedding website The Knot. Any alterations and custom additions can hugely increase this, however, and according to a survey by the site, just 20 percent of 2023 brides went with a custom-made dress.
As for the massive response to her simple question, McGuire, who also posts to Instagram under the username @juliamcguire, said she was “shocked.”
“I was genuinely on the fence about it, and so many people were either a hard yes or hard no.”
She said it was “very interesting to see [and] read through the different opinions.”
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