This is part two of Mia Freedman’s effort to find a Mother of The Groom outfit. You can read part one here.
TWO WEEKS BEFORE THE WEDDING:
This is the problem with deciding what you’re going to wear too early. You start over-thinking it.
#29:
Panic mode. I’m back to trying on things randomly like this furry tinsel skirt. Could I make it work? I couldn’t.
#30:
Did I mention I’ve lost my mind? I see this colour and like the idea of a bit off the shoulder. I buy it. Send the photo to my daughter who says it’s “giving Kris Jenner”.
I take the new mint outfit home to try it on and try on the outfit I’ve already bought to compare. Suddenly I hate them both but mostly myself.
The next day I return the mint top and pants along with the dark green top and skirt which means I’m back to zero outfits.
This is going well.
#31:
I adore this but it looks like something I would wear to work. It makes me think a bright colour is more me though. I’ve always known that. How did I forget that? Make this madness stop.
#32:
A suit? Stop it. We decided not a suit.
#33:
To be clear, I wasn’t seriously planning on wearing a fluoro pink tulle ballgown to the wedding but I needed to give myself a treat by trying on something fun because I was rapidly losing interest and patience in my quest and was keen to just wear double denim at this point.
ONE WEEK BEFORE THE WEDDING:
#34:
I see a photo of Pip Edwards wearing this Romance Was Born dress and wonder if I could pull it off so I order it. Nup. I never wear tight. Don’t want to start doing that on a day that is clearly already driving me bonkers.
#35:
Right, now we’re moving into some kind of boho Talitha Getty situation circa 1970.
#36:
I’ve never worn a one-shoulder dress before but because I am clutching at the s**ttiest of straws, I walk past a shop, see this in the window and try it on.
The colour is beautiful, but the style is not me. Why am I getting further away from an outfit as the wedding gets closer? What strange hell is this.
3 DAYS BEFORE THE WEDDING:
Tears. I finally realise what the hell is going on. Is it that I don’t like having to shop for an occasion? Yes. I prefer to just accumulate individual items I love and put them together in ways that make me happy.
But for me, getting dressed is not about how I look on the outside. I certainly don’t dress for men but I don’t dress for women either. I dress to feel a certain way. And how I want to feel depends on who I have to ‘be’. When a woman tells you she “has nothing to wear” she is never talking about the clothes she owns. She’s saying that she doesn’t have anything that matches who she needs to be at that particular time, on that particular day.
I know how to dress for work. For client functions or going to dinner with girlfriends or mooching around on the weekend. I know how to be work-Mia, social-Mia, mother-Mia, home-Mia.
But I have no idea how to be mother-of-the-groom Mia or mother-in-law Mia.
I don’t know how I’m supposed to 'be' in this next phase of my life. I use clothes to help me cross thresholds in my life but this deeply emotional and significant one has me utterly perplexed.
In the end, I decided that I was trying so hard to ‘be’ someone else, this idea of what I thought a MOG should and shouldn’t look like at her son’s wedding, it was doing my head in. That’s why I couldn’t find a way to reflect my head and heart in the mirror.
So I returned everything, and I opened my closet.
Mia Freedman = Mother of the groom
The winning look: CeliaB from Jumbled
This is the one. Sequins. Comfortable. Something I put together from different pieces I already owned. Which seems something….right. And me.
Let’s do this.
Image: Supplied + Mamamia.
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