Wedding planner confronts guests after bride spots them wearing white

‘You do not wear white to a wedding,’ event planner says

A wedding planner has sparked a debate about proper etiquette after she confronted four guests who wore white to a wedding.

In a viral TikTok video, event and wedding planner Cari Izaguirre shared exactly what not to wear as a guest at a wedding. “Everybody knows that proper etiquette - I mean, you should know. If you don’t know, you’re gonna learn,” she began the video. “You do not wear white to a wedding, okay?”

Izaguirre, who goes by @cari.izaguirre on the app, explained in the clip that she was currently at a wedding where four people decided to wear white as their guest attire - including one woman who was wearing a “full-on” wedding dress. “I’m just going to show you guys what not to wear when you go to a wedding,” she continued.

Her first example showed one woman wearing a short white dress with long sleeves. Izaguirre then panned her camera to the culprit she said decided to wear a “full-on” wedding dress. The second guest chose to wear an ivory, lace floor-length gown with cap sleeves and an open back. “You cannot tell me that that’s not a wedding dress,” Izaguirre told the camera, as she explained that the wedding guest was acquaintances with the groom.

The third wedding guest chose a knee-length, cut-out sleeveless dress that closely resembled an off-white colour. “So that is a light pink one,” Izaguirre said. “It’s very light pink but in pictures, it’s going to look white and then she has a beige jacket.”

Meanwhile, the fourth wedding guest decided to wear a white blouse and matching white sweater to the occasion. “That one wasn’t as bad. I mean, it is a white blouse and then she had a white sweater. But yeah, you just don’t do that,” Izaguirre maintained.

As for men, the wedding planner noted that they shouldn’t wear a white suit to a wedding so as to not upstage the bride and groom. However, she added that a white button-up shirt with a tie was “100 per cent fine” to wear to a wedding.

“But ladies, you do not wear things that look like the bride,” she said. “What would you guys do? Would you keep the love and peace or would you say something to them? I am that wedding planner that said something to them because I think that is not okay.

“I do my job and that’s what you have to do,” Izaguirre emphasised. “Don’t wear white, cream, light pink. Don’t do it, just don’t.”

Typically, wedding guests shouldn’t wear white to a wedding as a way to avoid upstaging the bride’s white wedding dress. But according to the Emily Post Institute, it can still be acceptable to wear white to a wedding as long as it doesn’t distract from the bride or her bridesmaids’ dresses.

In the comments section, many TikTok users were shocked that people don’t know it’s taboo to wear white to someone else’s wedding. “I GASPED at the second one,” one user wrote, referencing the woman who wore a floor-length gown, despite being only a guest.

“How do people not know this?!” another said.

However, others felt that some of their outfits didn’t exactly break the no-white-to-a-wedding rule.

“Both my mom and mother-in-law wore ivory. It’s not a big deal to everyone,” commented one person. “Not going to let what guests choose to wear spoil my wedding.”

“Two people wore white to my wedding. It didn’t even register in my head on the day,” said someone else. “I really don’t care. It was clear I was the bride.”

A third person wrote: “I don’t have a problem with light pastels. But white, light cream, ivory? No!”

In a follow-up video, Izaguirre revealed how she confronted the four wedding guests and told them their outfits were inappropriate. Speaking to the camera, the event planner explained how it was actually the bride who asked her to talk to the guests about their outfit choices. “The bride is the one who spotted these guests first, not me. She was looking out the window when the guests were getting off the bus,” Izaguirre said. “All of the sudden, all of these bridesmaids come to me, so I went to the [guests] because the bride and the mother specifically told me to.”

Izaguirre revealed that the woman who wore the light pink dress with long sleeves reasoned that her outfit was appropriate because she had “known the bride since she was little”. The second guest told Izaguirre that she decided to wear her light pink outfit because she didn’t get to wear the look to a previous wedding. The woman who wore the white blouse explained that she didn’t believe her outfit would pose an issue because she was also wearing black pants.

However, the woman who wore a “full-on” wedding dress to someone else’s wedding was “completely clueless” that the bride would be offended by her outfit choice. “She said that it was her culture to wear that type of dress at a wedding, and I said this is not your culture at this wedding,” Izaguirre said. “Everyone who has major common sense and knows anything about any etiquette will know you do not wear very light colours to a wedding.”

While the guests weren’t forced to change out of their outfits, the wedding planner did let them know that they couldn’t sit near the aisle because both the photographer and the videographer said the image would appear too white in the final results.

Izaguirre also took a moment to address commenters who believed that people should wear whatever they want to a wedding. “For the people that are like: ‘They should wear what they want and they should be able to wear white,’” she said. “You’re the people that would wear white to a wedding and that’s not okay.”