Mother of: Caroline (2021) and Meghan (2023)
Venues: Oheka Castle in Huntington, New York and Metropolitan Club of New York City
Vibe: Black Tie
Dresses: Alex Teih from Mieka in Woodbury, New York
Maggie was already down on mother of the bride dress shopping when a friend suggested a special occasion shop on Long Island.
This was pandemic times—Maggie’s daughter Caroline and fiancé Bobby had already postponed their winter wedding by a year, during which Maggie ordered and returned countless dresses in black, gold and silver, to no avail. “Nothing looked good,” she says.
So she went to that suggested boutique, Meika, with low expectations. “I went with a girlfriend, basically just to check off that box,” Maggie says. And indeed, most of the dresses were much fussier and glitzier than Maggie’s taste. After several comical try-ons, a stylist suggested a racer cut neckline gown, black with metallic pixels throughout and a skirt made of tiers of flocked tulle.
Maggie laughed. “I said I thought it looked like Jane Jetson from the cartoon.” But the sales associate stood firm, so Maggie tried on the fashion forward dress. “Damn! She was right. It looked great,” Maggie recalls. “The dress was fun, and it was not your typical MOB dress.” Uneasy about going with bare arms, the shop asked the designer to make Maggie a sheer bolero jacket in the same material. “It made me feel happy and confident.”
If only she had stayed off Instagram until the wedding.
Three weeks prior to Caroline’s wedding at the Oheka Castle in Huntington, New York, Maggie came across a social media post of an acquaintance walking her son down the aisle in the Very. Same. Dress. “After all that looking, how could someone else in my town, in my church have the same dress???” She panicked, and ordered several other dresses online.
“Then the life coach in me kicked in, and I talked myself off the ledge, calmed down, and put it behind me.” Maggie and the other mom had a good laugh after the weddings. Their guests didn’t overlap, anyway.
“In the end, I realized that we can try to make every effort to make everything perfect, but something can always go south. The point is how you deal with it. Pandemic, duplicate MOB dresses, weather—nothing will get in the way of celebrating this special milestone for your child. As a mother of the bride, you rise up and make it happen—no matter what!”
Even if your feet are killing you. Her sales associate at Mieka encouraged Maggie not to fret about shoes and to wear something comfortable. But Maggie is “a shoe person,” and she couldn’t put on any ol' pair for her daughter’s wedding. She chose suede Chanel pumps. “They looked great, but eventually KILLED me," Maggie says. "Walking around with feet that are screaming in pain is not fun.”
She prioritized comfortable heels (and a backup pair for later in the evening) two years later when her other daughter, Meghan, got married at the Metropolitan Club in New York City. And she went back to the designer of her first MOB dress, Alex Teih. This time, Maggie chose a strapless column style dress with a fitted waist and intricate beading that formed an all-over pattern in gunmetal, which fit the bride's metallic theme. The designer again made her a sheer jacket for arm coverage.
Truth be told, Maggie says she wasn’t as comfortable in the second dress as she had been in the first. “It was more fitted and I was worried I looked puffy.” But after trying heavy duty shapewear that only made her feel worse, she went with lighter, more comfortable smoothing garments and gave herself a pep talk. “I had to embrace my mature body and let it go!” Maggie says. “It’s amazing how we women torture ourselves." Halfway through the reception, she shed the jacket without hesitation. “I felt much more free and relaxed. And when I look at the pictures, I think: not bad!”
| Photography by Liz Banfield