Cathy Caradimitropoulo couldn't wait to show her friend the gown she chose for her daughter's summer wedding.
"I felt so beautiful in it," Cathy tells TODAY.com of the white one-shoulder design. "As soon as I tried it on, I was like, 'This is what I'm wearing.'"
So Cathy was crushed when instead of oohing and ahhing, the friend wrinkled her nose.
"She said to me, ‘That looks like a bridal dress,’” Cathy, 56, says. "And that’s when I started to panic. I was like, ‘Should I start looking for something else?’"
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Bride Marisa Iodice wouldn’t hear of it. Iodice, a teacher in New Jersey, meant it when she told her mom that she could wear absolutely any color. And Cathy would blend in perfectly with Iodice’s all-white bridal party.
“When we saw our mom in the dress, we knew she’d found the one,” Iodice, 30, tells TODAY.
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Marisa’s sister Alexa Caradimitropoulo agrees.
“She looked absolutely stunning. Who cares about the color?" Alexa, 28, says.
As it turns out, plenty of people care. After Alexa shared a TikTok video of Cathy walking down the aisle, she was inundated with opinions.
“The way we all know she is THAT KIND of mom,” one person wrote in the comments.
According to Cathy, that couldn't be further from the truth.
"Everyone who knows me knows that I hate being the center of attention," Cathy tells TODAY.
Other reactions included:
- “If that were my wedding, she’d have red wine fixing that dress before she hit the end of the aisle.”
- “I would have kicked her out.”
- “Wedding photographer here: parents can wear white, a lot of weddings I do the mums wear white, anyone who has beef with their mum for wearing white needs therapy.”
- “But it's a literal wedding dress.”
- “How selfish.”
- “Very poor taste trying to upstage the bride.”
- “My sister hated being the center of attention, so she made sure my mom had a showstopper of a dress. Let’s not judge what we don’t know. This MOB is STUNNING!:
- “So tacky. She isn’t the one getting married.”
- “She looks amazing. But 100% thought she was the bride!”
Iodice says older generations have fixed ideas about wedding attire. And Cathy has found that designers do, too.
"Traditional mother-of-the-bride dresses are very plain and dowdy,” Cathy says. "I wanted something that matched my personality."
Iodice, who was 19 weeks pregnant with twins, was never concerned about being upstaged by Cathy on her big day.
"I'm in a Facebook group for brides and it's crazy the things people worry about," Iodice says.
"I think it comes down to insecurity," she adds. "I wanted my mom to look and feel fabulous."
Liza Lieberman, a fashion stylist in New York City, says there are no set rules when it comes to wedding guest dress codes. However, when attending a wedding in a different culture, it's important to dress in accordance with the customs of the couple.
"The rules are whatever the couple getting married want them to be," Lieberman tells TODAY. "And if you don't know what they are, you should ask. It's important to understand what they're expecting of you."
This story first appeared on TODAY.com. More from TODAY:
