How did your race affect your wedding planning?

So where to start. I knew months back that I would write an article on this but didn’t know when I would have the time or energy but felt I needed to as I know I’m not on my own.

For any bride who got married in the last year, battling covid restrictions and constant rescheduling….I hear you! Everyone says wedding planning is one of the most stressful things, let alone doing it during a pandemic.?

Weddings are expensive. Full stop. UK weddings are even more expensive, hence our plan to jet-away to Sicily for ours, which in turn couldn’t happen. The dress - the most important part of the day? For some it is. For me it was important, but it wasn’t worth me spending half our budget, or even a quarter. As my husband would say ‘you wear it for one day, then what’? Well I actually have further plans to utilise mine but that’s another discussion.

So after browsing all the big wedding designer brands, I knew the style of dress I wanted and with covid constantly changing what we could and couldn’t do, I decided going to the designer themselves was going to be too costly and wasn’t sure I had enough time. I decided to embark on a 3 hour road trip with my best friend up north to a small boutique that provided dresses ‘off the peg’ - so you buy it there and then and get the adjustments made after.?

Jokingly in the car we talked about how we’re probably the first women of colour to go to this boutique. Anyway, three or four dresses later, I picked the one and it was so simple. Months later, and I’m sure brides will relate, I started to look at the cups on the dress and think, gosh, this isn’t for my skin colour. I overlooked it at the time with all the excitement and it didn’t come up, thinking this is how the dress looks.

It wasn’t until I was discussing with a friend about the lack of diversity in the bridal industry to provide appropriate textiles for our skin colour that I panicked and thought no, I need to change this. Who knew finding cups for my skin tone would be so tough. Here are the steps I took:

• I emailed over 20 supplier of general fabric in the UK and US
• I bought various cups on ebay to try of different skin tones (none were right)
• I bought the tulle fabric used for wedding dresses in a variety of colours (to put over the cups in case that worked)
• I bought skin coloured tights to try and cover the cups

All of the above started adding up but anyone who knows me, knows I’m determined so I wouldn’t be defeated. In the end my seamstress found some cups from a supplier that at the time looked too dark for my skin but when applied to the beading, came out perfectly!

With all the stress of wedding planning, feeling othered within this process was difficult but something many of us are unfortunately used to. Why shouldn’t I have my dream dress, along with other women of colour? I knew friends who purposely didn’t go for certain dresses because it didn’t look right on their skin. This is 2021! We should be able to have any dress we want and being a woman of colour, shouldn’t mean it has to come with all the extra costs.

Before reading this, this may issue may have never crossed your mind. I want to see more women, more models that look like me in the bridal industry, working to create beautiful garments that are made for us. The default response from many people that I reached out to was, “oh so sorry”, without any suggestion.

Whilst the industry has a long way to go, I do want to highlight an amazing designer, Gbemi Okunlola who creates bespoke bridal attire for women of colour, who is leading the way!

All that being said, we got there in the end and I don’t look too bad if I do say so myself ;)