Category Archive

Fashion Advice

Sure, we’ve got wedding dress shopping advice and guides for plus-sized folks… but Offbeat Wed’s fashion coverage includes SO much more, like tuxedo alternatives for grooms, clothes for genderqueer and nonbinary folks, lots of very unique wedding shoes, and more!

black wedding jumpsuit

What’s a bride to wear if you like playing with gender expectations?

My fiance loves to wear a bow tie and suit jacket, and equally loves to wear little dresses — and she’s at an absolute loss as to what to wear for our July 2014 wedding! She’s got a faux-hawk with the sides of her head shaved, and loves playing with gender expectations. Sometimes she’s soft-butch, sometimes she’s femme.

having a dress custom made1

A “short, round, and very busty” girl’s guide to having a dress custom made

The idea of wedding dress shopping was something I had always found challenging. As someone who is short, round, and very busty, I hated the idea of being clamped into an off-the-peg sample dress four sizes too small. I looked at dresses aimed at curvier brides and saw that most of them were ugly, and seemed to be about hiding your body, not celebrating it. I knew any dress I bought in a bridal store would have to be massively modified to fit me. So instead of dealing with all that, I started thinking about having a dress made-to-measure.

toulouse lautrec

Why do I have cleavage on my back? Learning to love your Venus Fold

For a lot of women, their first experience with a structural shaping garment other than a bra is a corset-back wedding dress — and they quickly learn that a corset is a bit more complicated to wear than a bra. (What, you mean I have to reach in and shift stuff around to get it sitting right?) When you compress the average torso in a corset, the person’s back skin tends to fold a bit on itself. This is commonly referred to as “back cleavage” or the “Venus Fold.” Let’s talk about it.

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Play dress-up to help guests with their wedding attire

My fiancé and I are getting married in a field in November. We wanted our guests to be dressy but comfortable, so we included inserts in our invitations to give guests a heads-up that they should try to look nice but bring sweaters and avoid the high heels and ball gowns. But… it just caused confusion. To remedy the confusion, my sister and I played dress-up!