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20th September 2017
03:40pm BST
It's all smiles and excitement in the photograph that Debbie chose to share on Facebook, but you can bet your butt that it was a different story as the realisation dawned on each of these ladies that they were wearing the same dress as FIVE OTHER PEOPLE. As a female, I'm familiar with the protocol adopted when it transpires that someone is wearing the same outfit as you. You're immediately faced with a choice: Avoid that person for the day, go home immediately and cry, or my personal favourite, overcompensate for how mortified you are by acting like this is the most incredible thing that's ever happened by taking an unnecessary amount of photographs and shouting 'TWINS!' every time you lock eyes, then informing everyone nearby of this unlikely coincidence which you are entirely fine with before they start making fun of how cringe the situation is.
There's a small trace of the individual decisions these ladies have made in the above photograph. Numbers 3 and 5 have consumed a considerable amount of alcohol to aid coping with the unfolding situation. "What a brilliant night we're having. This is fine", they're shouting at the time of the image being captured. Number 4, whom I believe to be Debbie, was visibly drafting the above Facebook post in her mind as she forced her husband to take the photo because she is a social media guru. Number 2 is getting on with things. She thinks she's the best looking one there and is happy to have some stock models nearby to reinforce how superior she looks in the dress. But numbers 1 and 6 are livid. There's steam coming out of their expertly hidden ears. They're irate. Sure, one person wearing the same dress is a coincidence, but FIVE? If any of the fellow dress wearers woke up to the charred remains of their outfit smoking on the floor, the finger should rightfully be pointed towards 1 and 6. Particularly number 6.
Question 2: Why did all six of them pick this particular dress, given that it's very blatantly nothing to write home about?
I wish I'd made this up but legitimately this is what has just happened. I visited the Forever New website, then selected the 'Wedding' tab, followed by the 'Wedding Guest Dresses' option and much to my shock and delight, there lay this exact dress at the top of the list. These lazy sods clearly did the same thing. The first bloody option on the list and they've all fallen for it. At this point I'm hugely surprised that the number of attendees in that clobber was as low as six. They deserved to be met with two dozen of their kind for putting such little effort into their appearance at this, the most Facebook documented wedding of the year.
I didn't expect to find such an immediate answer to the above question, but I guess that's just a sign of how transparent these ladies' actions were. Admittedly, I know nothing about fashion, but the second dress pictured above looks far nicer to me than the first. Heck, even the third one is better and they both appear to be back in stock. Hurtful as it may sound, if we're being honest with ourselves, the dress the girls all purchased isn't nice and it looks a bit like an apron my Mum used to have. I don't know what the acceptable wedding attire is in Australia, but I know that it probably requires a bit more effort than picking the first option from 147 items on a popular website that boasts free delivery on orders over $50.
Question 3: Was the bride positively livid that the attention was taken from her on such a special day?
All we know of this beautiful bride is that she posed for a photograph with the six lazy dress shoppers on the dance floor during what is sure to have been the best day of her life. She would've put months of planning into this day, if the decor is anything to go by. The guests in the background are visibly enjoying themselves, the candles and flower chandeliers are what dreams are made of, even the chairs are fancy as heck. Then in walk six women independent of each other wearing the exact same thing. All eyes were immediately drawn to them, eagerly awaiting each one's reaction to this mishap. "Whose wedding is this anyway?", one of the guests probably said during the debacle because he/she is scum.
It was very sportsmanlike of the bride to pose for a photograph with the girls, but I'd like to believe that she had nothing to do with them for the rest of the day following that. Tom Hardy may as well have turned up at the wedding, such was the hysteria I'm certain a six-way outfit clash would induce. When people headed home that evening, are we honestly going to sit here and pretend that they remarked on the day itself, the groom's heartfelt speech, the food, or even how beautiful the bride looked? No. They were reminiscing about their honour of getting to witness six ladies slowly discovering that they had bought and worn the same dress as five other people at a wedding. That bride has every right to be livid.
Question 4: Should we actually look into creating an outfit registry for social situations, as Debbie suggested?
Credit where it's due, Debbie has touched upon a pretty solid idea here and I'm not going to allow that hideous dress to distract us from it for a moment longer. Debbie suggests that the shop should "start a bridal registry so that your customers can enquire whether anyone else has purchased one of your dresses for the same event", followed by three cry laugh emojis. Honestly, I think Debbie might be one of the finest minds the world has ever seen. She's a genius. That kind of logic is unparalleled. Fucking hell it's an incredible idea. Think of the trauma Debbie has just endured, yet she still has the presence of mind to pull a positive from the situation by turning her efforts to preventing a repeat of this ever happening again to anyone. It's inspirational.
Let's indulge the dream for a moment, if we may. In Debbie's utopia, every time you buy an outfit for something, you provide a very brief description of when and where you're planning to wear it, thereby eliminating the possibility of the scenario detailed above from ever happening again. Use you head. Get real. There are only so many outfits in the world competing for the bodies of 7.5 billion people. Naturally, similar incidents are going to keep happening until we take drastic measures to prevent them. The solution is similar to the wedding gift registries those crazy cats have in the USA, except for clothes. It's life-changing. It's simple. It's classic Debbie.
Question 5: Did Debbie get that voucher in the end and if so, did she split it six ways?
Rather than primarily aiming to change the world, or even just give us all a good laugh at her misfortune, Debbie had the good sense to chance her arm at getting a voucher out of the company that selfishly sold all six wedding attendees the exact same dress. "Think I deserve a gift voucher for all this advertisement" is a cheeky statement, but it also negates the efforts of the other five ladies who went through the same ordeal as Debbie. As of yet, there's no official response to the Facebook post from Forever New, which has led me to believe that they're not coughing up a measly little voucher any time soon.
But what if they do? Are they going to grant Debbie her wishes of a single solitary voucher, or reward all six of these ladies for their bravery displayed at that wedding? For all we know, there could've been a seventh dress-wearer who bottled it and immediately returned home upon arrival. There could've been an eighth and ninth! How will we ever repay these women for their sacrifice? Going forward, I'd like to suggest that we Crowdfund the revenue to get Debbie's event clothing registry service off the ground. It's got the legs to go all the way and I'm backing it to the hilt. Debbie will get her reimbursement, as will the five brave souls who also attended the wedding in the same dress. There'll be an event to launch the new service, to which all the ladies will again turn up in the exact same dress. Everyone will die laughing and we'll come full circle. The end.
