Donna J.: That Garden Shimmer

Donna asked her daughter-in-law-to-be what she wanted her to wear to the March wedding. The bride, Sarah, said “wear whatever you feel great in!” And then she thought about her wedding colors and amended: “Maybe a neutral.”

The entire bridal party wore soft neutrals—the groom and his groomsmen in cream colored suits and mossy green ties; bridesmaids in a similar pale green—a beautiful contrast to the deep greens of the Tennessee garden where the wedding took place, about 30 minutes south of Nashville.

Donna stuck with the neutral palette, but added an extra flair with a metallic fabric. She found a dress that looked perfect on Pinterest: one shoulder, fit and flare in a shimmery yet structured gold metallic fabric with an asymmetrical ruffle on the skirt and just a hint of bling on the belt.

“It was exactly what I had pictured,” Donna says. She kept going back to it on Pinterest, but when she tracked down the Mac Duggal dress in store, they only had a size that was too big. That’s when Donna really fired up her search engine.

She pointed her cursor to Poshmark, the online designer resale marketplace. “I always check there for designer brands,” she says. Much scrolling was required, but eventually she found her dress—in her size. When her son Weston saw her in the dress, he declared “ You’ll be ready for the Met Gala!”

She added a cropped fur jacket for the outdoor ceremony.

“We might be over 50,” Donna says of mothers of, “but we still want to look modern and glamorous.”

| Photography by Jadyn Rose