السلام عليكم و رحمةالله و بركاته

It’s summer here in South Africa.. Not sure if I’ve mentioned that recently, but now you know lol.

And with the season and holidays, comes weddings, engagements and many other social functions.

Trying to get an outfit that is both cool yet covers what needs to be covered for a Muslimah does at times prove to be a HUGE challenge.

For the first wedding I got inspired by an outfit I saw online.
Thank Allah, we have dressmakers that can make anything we want, and so it was my good fortune to get the outfit made.
Dresses are ideal, especially because of the heat.
The first dress was made of satin which was good because the area we went to for the wedding, turned out to be FREEZING cold.

Doesn’t look cold out there, does it?
Believe me.. It was!

On to wedding number 2.

Here’s the thing with family weddings..
You can never wear the same dress twice to a wedding.. Unless you’re a brilliant fashionista that’s talented in re-styling a dress.. Rather get another one to be on the safe side.

So there’s me… Shopping for a dress inbetween running errands and studying and working and a million other things…

And the easiest thing is.. Walk into a retail store.
Foschini is a store I don’t really shop at much, but I couldn’t have been happier when I found this unique colored dress purely by luck.
I was even more happy when I realized that with the amazing weight loss I’ve had recently, it fitted and looked pretty great on.

It was quite rather open and I thought I’d have to go material hunting in order to match up the color to add sleeves and to add more cover to the bust and back.

I didn’t quite get that far and so paired it up with the black open abaya from the above outfit.
Adding a few accessories and my black hijab and I was set, Alhamdulillah.

On to wedding number 3…

This one was a bit of a challenge..
I wasn’t actually expecting to attend it, but in the end I was able to go and ….well… I didn’t actually have another dress ready.

So I went looking into my wardrobe and came across a dress that I hadn’t worn simply because it was rather fancy with a small train etc.

Remember how I mentioned that I’d lost weight…? Well… Just so happens that the dress ended up being too big for me and so it looked baggy.
But all was not lost… This was the part where I’m about 1400km from home and busy stitching a dress at 2am down the sides so it fits better.

Not to mention adding a few extra embellishments to it once done so it didn’t look weird.

I guess we women can get highly creative when the necessity arises.

But here’s the thing that I’ve discovered: Simple elegance always works!

At the moment we’re on to weddings 4 & 5.

I am dress shopping today & hoping to find some beautiful dresses.

So far my go to stores have been:

And my fabulous dressmaker.

I’d love to hear which are your go to stores when it comes to prepping for weddings & other events.

I’m off to go get a much needed iced coffee, so I’ll end of here.

Have a fabulous time ahead.

وعليكم السلام و رحمةالله و بركاته