The wedding invitation arrived like a beautiful riddle: “We’re kindly asking guest to wear black tie, optional.”
As someone raised on Nigerian weddings bursting with color, where guests compete in kaleidoscopes of ankara prints, this monochromatic mandate felt like stepping into uncharted territory. It was an opportunity to expand my own assumptions of style code when it comes to weddings. Add a weekday celebration in Tampa (my first visit to Florida’s Gulf Coast), and suddenly I was drowning in firsts, each one more intriguing than the last.
SHOP WEDDING GUEST LOOK
What I wore: The Great Black Dress Hunt
Months. It took me literal months to decide on what to wear.
You’d think shopping for black would be simple—after all, it’s one the most made color for clothing. But hunting for the perfect black wedding guest dress? That’s where things get deliciously complicated. Every black dress I owned suddenly felt wrong: too corporate, too casual, too been-there-done-that. I was cycling through online orders like a woman possessed, packages arriving and departing my doorstep because I couldn’t make up my mind on what to wear.
Some Other Options
My wedding outfit philosophy has always been calculated: decode the crowd, anticipate the timeline, read the venue’s energy, then express yourself within those boundaries. Usually, I’m dress-first, then building my looks from that. This time felt different—I’d fallen for a pair of shoes that sparked something electric in my imagination. I was ready to architect an entire look around them.
Then they betrayed me. Back to the drawing board, weeks before takeoff.
The cocktail dress code whispered sophistication but winked at playfulness. I craved something that was eccentric in its own way—not floor-length traditional, but striking enough to honor the gravity of two people choosing forever. Something that would photograph beautifully against Tampa’s golden hour light.
The Lightning Strike Moment
Farfetch came to my rescue on a mildly chilly day in DC.
There it was: the dress. You know that feeling when your heart recognizes something before your brain catches up? That electric jolt of yes, this, finally? I didn’t hesitate. One click, purchase complete. Two seconds later, I refreshed the page out of curiosity—the price had doubled.
Fashion lesson learned: sometimes patience is a virtue, but in fashion that statement is a gamble.
With the dress secured, I became a woman obsessed. I sketched the complete vision like a stylist possessed, mapping every detail from jewelry placement to the exact curl pattern I wanted in my hair. Each element had to speak to the others in perfect harmony.
This process awakened something unexpected—I was falling in love with the art of complete look creation. Maybe there was a stylist hiding inside this writer all along.
The Shoe Odyssey
Two days. Thirty-two hours online. Hundreds of tabs open on my iPhone device.
I needed shoes that would flirt with my dress while commanding their own spotlight. The perfect dance partner—supportive but never overshadowing, complementary but independently stunning. And after a few days of scrolling, filtering, zooming, and agonizing over heel heights and toe shapes I found the perfect shoe from Casadei.
Midnight Bag Magic
Five days before departure, I realized none of my handbags belonged in this carefully curated universe I’d constructed.
Now, I’m not a bag person. While I’ll gladly drop serious money on a show-stopping dress or architectural shoes, handbags have never ignited that same financial recklessness in me. But this look needed the right bag—it was incomplete without it.
Revolve at midnight became my unlikely fairy godmother. Fifty percent off, reflective details that echoed my dress’s subtle shimmer, proportions that sang harmony with my finally-chosen shoes. Sometimes the fashion gods reward the desperate and the sleep-deprived.
The Hair Gamble
Here’s where things got really risky.
Something I’d never attempted before. For a weekday wedding where failure would mean walking around Tampa looking like I’d lost a fight with a curling iron, with no time for professional redemption. The vision in my head was so specific, so integral to the complete look. The crescent on my hair matching the same curve detail on my dress, that I couldn’t bear the thought of miscommunication. It had to be exactly what I saw in my mind’s eye.
The Reveal
Standing in that Tampa hotel mirror, every risk had paid dividends.
The dress caught light like liquid obsidian. The shoes elevated not just my height but my confidence. The bag provided the perfect finishing flourish. And the hair—the hair was everything I’d imagined and more, framing my face like I’d been born to wear this exact combination.
Sometimes the most beautiful discoveries happen when someone hands you a constraint and whispers, “Now show me what you can do.” All to say I had the best time and look forward to the travel post rehearsing my time at Tampa.
