The Cost of Finding A Dress To Wear To A Black Tie Optional Wedding

Or, a meditation on status anxiety.

I am a planner, perhaps to a fault. If presented with an event four months in the future, the cruise ship activity director in my brain kicks in at once, fussing and preparing as a safeguard against the unexpected. If I plan for something now, I will be set when everyone else is quietly panicking. If I plan ahead, I’ll always make sure to do the right thing.

The thinking is that by virtue of my own preparedness, I will avoid missteps. I will know the right thing to say. When faced with more than one fork at a place setting, I will instinctively gravitate towards the correct one for the salad course. Etiquette and its attendant rituals are nothing more than a mutually understood code for easing the friction of social interactions. Inherently understanding these codes is a marker of class; if you were raised right, you’ll know what to do in mixed company. The meaning of the rules change situationally; what’s polite in one setting is dreadfully improper in another. Keeping track of those changes isn’t taxing, but when expected to present in a certain way in an environment when I feel drastically out of place is. A weddings— the “black tie optional” wedding of my best friend in a very nice ballroom at a lovely inn in Vermont, specifically — is a prime example.

I’ve mastered the wedding rigamarole for the most part: smile; be gracious; cry when it’s appropriate; sneak clandestine cigarettes as far away from the venue as possible; don’t get too drunk; try not to offend anyone with anything at all. Dressing the part is much more fraught. I’m casual by nature, inclined to dress down for events out of a quiet sense of rebellion against societal rules that I find to be outdated and arbitrary. Participating in events that require an innate understanding of how one should be stokes a peculiar sort of status anxiety that never seems to go away. I’m old enough to know better, but I don’t know if what I know is correct.

I have one black dress in my closet that has carried me through weddings and holiday parties. I bought it four years ago for maybe $20 and with a necklace and a lot of lipstick, I’ve clung to the hope that it works. But this black tie optional wedding threw me for a loop.

The internet informed me that a cocktail dress would be acceptable. “What’s a cocktail dress?” I asked a friend, who seemed genuinely confused that I didn’t understand this cateogry of clothing and concerned that I didn’t own any.

“You know, a dress that you wear to dinners,” she said. “A cocktail dress.”

Stymied but undeterred, I made some purchases. Here’s what they cost me.

$10 for the dress I bought optimistically in August before I learned that this event was black tie optional. It’s a nice dress; dark maroon, backless, silky enough to look expensive. I described it to the bride’s sister at the bachelorette party. She wrinkled her brow and said, thoughtfully, “You might need to buy something else.”

$20 for a pair of very high heels, purchased under the influence of a very good deal, that were so uncomfortable I banished them to the back of my closet, never to be seen again.

$30 for a pair of much more sensible shoes that, when worn to a wedding last weekend, left a giant blister on my left toe. They will have to do.

$76 for a dress that feels more formal, but upon closer inspection, reads as “Sexy Mennonite,” especially in comparison to the almost-prom dresses my friends are wearing.

$20 for a necklace to break up the wide expanse of chest exposed by said dress. My sister, upon viewing the necklace: “It’s too small.”

An anticipated $20 for another necklace to balance out the smallness of the one I purchased while under the influence of Dayquil and the exuberance of leaving the house for the first time that day.

Total: $176.

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