Being a wedding guest often comes at a cost: travel, hotels, gifts — and adding a new dress to those expenses can feel like a huge burden. It gets even more complicated when you have a fall or winter wedding, since you can’t just throw on a simple floral maxi from the summer.
This year, I had two nearly back-to-back weddings to plan for that required a bit more weather consideration: A predominantly outdoor fall wedding and a formal winter one.
I decided a floor-length, velvet style would work for both. After noticing an exciting option on someone else’s Instagram, I hunted on Google for something similar to a “long velvet 70s wrap dress” until I found a reasonably priced one on Amazon.
Unfortunately, this dark red-orange dress used to be about $60, but the price has increased to over $80. But there are still lots of colors — like dark green, black, and navy — that are between $60 and $70.
Amazon
I got the dress in maroon (pictured on the two women in the middle), but in person, it looks a lot more like burnt orange.
Even though it looked a bit like a choir dress in some of the product photos, I liked it because it seemed warm enough for an outdoor, 50-60 degree wedding and versatile enough to either dress down or dress up, depending on the occasion. I wore a more dangly, statement necklace for the more casual wedding and more minimal accessories for the formal one.
According to a lot of the reviews, this dress is flattering on a lot of different body types and is relatively easy to tailor. (For the brides out there, the reviews on this dress also indicate that it could be a nice option for bridesmaid dresses.)
On top of the cost of the dress, I did get it hemmed and altered to be a little tighter on top, which should normally be a low expense, but I got scammed into paying more for the tailoring than I did for the dress (a story for a different time!)
Julia Pugachevsky/Insider
I also paid for Spanx because this dress is very form-fitting, but other than that, it was a relatively low-cost way to achieve an outfit that felt right for two weddings without the hassle of renting anything or paying a lot for two gowns I probably won’t wear again.
All in all, I loved wearing this dress to both weddings. I got a lot of compliments and felt really comfortable the whole time. I’m even thinking of converting it into a wide-leg jumpsuit one day, making this an even more permanent staple of my closet.
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