50's Style for a Wedding

As I mentioned a few posts ago, Mark and I attended a wedding last weekend atop Mt. Tamalpais (known around these parts as Mt. Tam), which is just a few miles north of the Golden Gate Bridge. It presented the perfect opportunity for me to wear this beautiful vintage dress I bought a few months ago. I don't often go for 50's style dresses because I feel like they aren't ideal for my figure, but this one caught my eye because of the lovely fabric, the cute collar and neckline bow detail, and the best part, the row of giant buttons down the back:

I found this dress at Decades of Fashion on Haight Street, which is an amazing (albeit pricey) vintage store. It fit me so perfectly that I knew I had to have it, and what a perfect outfit it made for a wedding, no? To me there's something reverent about wearing vintage to a wedding; weddings have such a strong cultural significance that it makes sense to wear clothes that hearken back to eras with a greater sense of decorum.

Astoundingly, of all the dozens of hats I have lying around at the house, none exactly captured the vibe I wanted, so I made one special for the occasion. It's made of a thick, braided straw material, which has a nice shine to it that matches the black buttons of the dress. I made a matching bow out of scrap straw and edged the bow with a pale blue silk to match the striped fabric on the dress's back panel and neckline bow detail.

 

I got loads of compliments on this dress, and I felt utterly fabulous. Perhaps I need to rethink 50's dresses; they seem to suit my figure just fine.

 Puppy update: Our puppy finally has a name! After struggling with it all through the weekend, we finally narrowed it down to the last 3 choices, wrote them on slips of paper, folded them up and threw them on the floor in front of the puppy for him to choose from. He sniffed the first two and then enthusiastically grabbed the third, thus selecting Spencer as his new name. And yes, he's only a few months old and he's almost as big as Georgie. Perhaps Goliath would've been more accurate...