“Bare legs at a wedding, always. Tights are for funerals and job interviews” is spoken at every hen do like some deep immutable law and everyone laughs because nobody wants to be that person who has actually Googled it. I laughed too, several times a year for years, until October, until a wedding in a marquee with no heating whatsoever, until one five minute conversation with the bride’s mother that has haunted me ever since.
She wasn’t accusing me of ruining her daughter’s wedding. She just looked down at my legs like you would someone who’d mistakenly turned up to a christening in a bikini. Like that was a decision you might conceivably make but had clearly not been made by me, this polite momentary confusion, and then she said “oh, I didn’t realise it had got that cold” in a tone which left zero doubt that she believed I’d chosen to be chilly rather than cold due to atmospheric conditions.
So let’s break the rule down here, because it’s wrong, sure. But only because it’s half an instruction manual. It’s not common sense, it’s merely common.
The season and the venue do more heavy lifting than the “rule” lets on
Bare legs at a summer wedding, doors wide open on the marquee, everyone slightly pink from taking photos in the sun, nobody cares about your tights because there’s prosecco and someone’s cousin has made a speech that’s lasted twelve minutes too long. Nobody’s eyeing up ankles. That’s the wedding the rulebook is referring to and yeah, when you’re talking about that wedding bare legs aren’t wrong, they’re right. Sheer bare legs look cooler than sheered topped legs. They look better in photos. You don’t need to defend your lack of tights to anyone, even the bride’s mother. Weddings that cause you to question that “rule” are all summer weddings. Church weddings with wooden floors, autumn evening receptions where the hotel forgot to turn the air con off after their summer weddings six months previously…they’ve got nothing in common with your garden wedding in June except “wedding” and “your legs”.
That marquee wedding was in October. It had heaters. Three of them. Pointedly placed at maximum heat efficiency for the top table and zero efficiency for the guests. By the time dinner was served my legs looked like Mortadelo’s from spending too long in the freezer department and rather than eating my chicken leg I spent most of the main course with my thighs squeezed together under the table like that’s what normal people do to relax while they’re dining. Her look wasn’t “girl those pants should not be bare”, it was “why is someone at my daughters wedding literally shivering in their shoes”. Her problem wasn’t pantyhose, it was that she noticed me. Saw that I was cold. Literally cold, goosebumps cold at her daughters wedding and heard that as me not dressing appropriately for the room rather than her venue having provided enough space heaters to warm her face, not her guests. Which do I blame her for? Sort of. But you know what else I didn’t do?
Check the venue. I checked that the guest list felt right and assumed it would extend to how warm the place would be. The season you’re getting married in and where you’re getting married matters at least as much as whether it’s fashionable to wear pantyhose or not. Will your outfit read as “I just woke up like this” or “I can’t feel my fingers but I refuse to wear pants”? If the answer is the latter you need to rethink whether June in a registry office with indoor heating is the venue for going pants-free.
What sort of things are on your legs matters more than if there are things on your legs
And this is the part the “nah don’t wear tights to weddings” brigade never talk about because there are a million different types of tights and only one of them weirds people out. Thick opaque “actual tights” tights, the kind you wear under jeans in winter, those look stupid with a casual wedding dress code. No arguing there, there’s a heaviness to that fabric that just shouts “winter!” and clashes with “nice outfit.” But sheer stockings, nude stockings, properly nude stockings, not the kind from Asda that are clearly meant to be orange but exist in a mystery flattering colour only they know about; that is a different garment serving a vastly different purpose and 90% of people at the wedding have no idea you’re wearing them unless they get close enough to start commentating on your fabric choices.
It took me a while to learn that the hard way too; another tent wedding years ago where I’d grabbed a pair of stockings in the wrong “nude” colour the night before in a panic and turned up to discover they were the sort of orange-tinted nude that must exist solely to mock you. A woman tapped me on the shoulder right before the pronouncement and hissed “Are your tights a bit…. warm toned?” Which is about as polite as anyone has ever told me I resemble a packet of Wotsits. That is what people mean when they say tights are weird at weddings. Not the goddamn tights, but the £8 pair you grabbed from the supermarket dressing room in sweatpants and left better in than you because they catch the light every time you walk. The right shade means the right pair of stockings disappear from people’s faces in the same way your bare legs would, they’re just keeping your body temperature at bearable levels instead of 35C below bearable.
There’s a denier issue too; forty denier vs eight denier is answering two totally different questions with the same garment and lumping them both as “bare legs vs tights” is why half the people arguing about this have no idea what they’re talking about. Sheer stockings under a knee-skimming summer dress Answer: practical, barely noticeable, who’s looking at your legs anyway?. Thick opaque stockings under a dress that’s obviously made for bare legs Answer: wrong, why aren’t you wearing trousers with that?! And that second option is the outcome that’s going to get you The Look, not the stockings themselves but your decision to wear thick heavy material with a dress that in no way wanted them to be seen with it. So if you’re stood there wondering if it is ok ask yourself yes or no about wearing stockings but about whether you’ve answered the question your outfit and the venue are actually asking. Have you checked the forecast or assumed from previous years it’ll be the same? Fuck the rule, dress for the wedding you’re going to, not the one the person tweeting their wedding rulez remembered.
