What to Wear to a Summer Wedding: A Jewelry Guide

Six weddings between now and October. The first one is a Saturday in mid-June, in a backyard in the Hudson Valley, and the dress for it has been hanging on the closet door since the dry cleaner returned it on Tuesday. The shoes and the bag have been chosen, but the jewelry has not, which is the work of the next two days, and which is the work that the wearer who has been to enough summer weddings has come to think of as the only real choice a wedding guest has to make.

This is, I have come to think, what summer wedding dressing actually is: a series of small choices about what to wear that get easier as the season progresses, and one ongoing choice about jewelry that almost no one writes about with any seriousness. The dress and the shoes and the bag stay roughly the same across the summer. The jewelry is the part of the outfit that changes depending on the ceremony, the dinner, and the dance floor, and the wearer who has not thought about it in advance is the wearer who arrives at six in the wrong pieces for whatever the room is asking for.

What jewelry should you wear to a summer wedding?

The jewelry to wear to a summer wedding is light, layered, and mostly composed of pieces you would wear on a Saturday evening anyway. A pearl strand at the throat, a small chain at a slightly different length, a thin ring or two, a pair of small earrings. Nothing heavy, nothing that competes with the bride, nothing the wearer has to take off to dance.

The reason for the lightness is partly practical and partly philosophical. Summer weddings happen outside more often than not, which means the wearer is going to be in some combination of heat, humidity, sun, and possibly grass for several hours before the indoor reception begins. The jewelry that survives the outdoor ceremony is the jewelry that lives quietly against bare skin without being aware of the temperature. Pearls and a thin silver chain both do this. A heavy pendant on a long chain that catches the wearer's blouse every time she sits down does not.

The philosophical part is more subtle. The wedding is the bride's day, and the bride has been thinking about her jewelry for months, and her jewelry is the only jewelry in the room that is supposed to make a statement. The wedding guest's jewelry is supposed to be present without competing, which is approximately the opposite of what most occasion jewelry is designed to do. The wearer who shows up with a statement necklace is, with all good intentions, putting herself in conversation with the bride's choices, which is a conversation no guest wants to win.

This is the principle behind nearly every recommendation that follows. The wedding guest is dressed to be photographed in groups, to dance, to receive a long hug from someone she has not seen in two years, and to drink champagne in a backyard. None of these activities reward heavy jewelry, and all of them reward jewelry that has been chosen with the wearer's relationship to her own day in mind, not the wearer's relationship to the room.

Can you wear pearls to a summer wedding?

Yes, pearls belong to summer weddings more than they belong to any other occasion in the calendar. Pearls were grown in warm water by living creatures, and they want warmth against the skin to stay luminous, and a summer wedding in the late afternoon light is approximately the most flattering environment a pearl will ever appear in. The wearer who shows up in pearls is the wearer who has read the room correctly.

The longer reading on why pearls belong to summer is in the brand's pearl guide. The short version for wedding purposes is that the late afternoon light at an outdoor ceremony will catch on the surface of a pearl in a way that no other piece of jewelry handles, and the pearl will look more itself in that light than it will at any holiday party for the rest of the year.

The pearl beaded necklaces at Glass Balloon were designed for this kind of wearing. The strand sits just below the collarbone at the length most flattering against bare summer skin. The pearls are freshwater, slightly irregular, luminous in the way only natural pearls are, and they pair with everything a summer wedding asks the wearer to wear: a silk dress, a linen blazer over a sundress, a long skirt with bare shoulders.

The single pearl strand at the throat is the most reliable choice for the ceremony. The strand can be layered with a thin silver chain at a slightly different length at the reception, which adds dimension without weight, and both pieces stay on through the dance floor because pearls do not need to be removed for anything short of swimming. The wearer who has chosen them correctly at six is the wearer who is still wearing them at midnight.

What about silver for a summer wedding?

Silver at a summer wedding works best as a supporting piece rather than the lead. A thin silver chain layered with pearls, a small sterling silver ring, a pair of small silver earrings: these are the pieces that hold up across the outdoor ceremony, the dinner, and the dance floor. Avoid heavy silver statement pieces; they read as winter jewelry in summer light.

Sterling silver in summer is the daily material the brand has been writing about for two years, and the reason it works at a wedding is the same reason it works at any other warm weather occasion: it does not tarnish noticeably across a single evening, it does not react with sweat or sunscreen quickly enough to matter during one event, and the cool tone reads as restraint against the warm tones of summer dressing.

The 925 Sterling Silver Collection includes pieces sized specifically for layering with pearls. The thin chain at a slightly shorter or longer length than the pearl strand creates the dimension that turns a single piece into a layered look without adding any weight on the body. A silver ring on the third or fourth finger of the right hand does the same work for the hand, and a pair of small silver earrings, worn with hair down, does the same work for the face.

Avoid heavy silver pendants on long chains, chunky silver bracelets that catch on the bride's veil during the group photo, and silver chokers that compete visually with the neckline of the dress. The principle is consistent. The silver is doing the work of small support, not loud presence.

What jewelry should you not wear to a summer wedding?

Do not wear anything that competes with the bride's jewelry, anything heavy enough to make you aware of it during the ceremony, or anything that requires constant adjustment. This includes statement necklaces, large stones, heavy bangles that rattle, ornate cocktail rings worn as the dominant piece, and any jewelry chosen the morning of without a moment of intention.

The statement necklace is the most common error. The wearer who chooses a large pendant or a heavy beaded piece for a wedding is choosing to be visible in a way the room is not asking her to be visible. The bride is the one whose jewelry is meant to be looked at; the guest's jewelry is meant to participate in the wearer's quiet presence in the room.

Large stones, particularly colored ones, are the second common error. A statement cocktail ring in turquoise or coral or any color that catches the light from across the lawn pulls focus during the ceremony in a way that is unfair to everyone present, the bride most of all. If the wearer must wear a stone, it should be small, white or close to white, and worn in a way that asks for no attention.

The third error is harder to name and more common than the first two: jewelry chosen without intention. The wearer who shows up in the pieces she happened to grab from the dish on the dresser twenty minutes before the wedding is the wearer who has not actually thought about the wedding, and the jewelry will show this. The brand's longer reading on what makes jewelry look chosen rather than grabbed covers the same principle in the everyday register, and the principle applies to wedding dressing more directly than to almost anything else. A wedding guest's jewelry takes ten minutes to think about. The wearer who has done that work shows up in the right pieces, while the wearer who has not done that work shows up looking like she did not think about the wedding, which is a thing the bride will notice even if she does not say anything.

What about jewelry as a wedding gift?

The best jewelry gifts at a wedding are not for the bride, who has chosen her own. The best gifts are for the bride's mother, the bridesmaids, or as a personal gesture between close friends. A small piece chosen with the recipient's existing collection in mind reads as thoughtful in a way an expensive piece chosen without that knowledge does not.

The bride's mother is often forgotten in the jewelry of the wedding day, and a small piece given to her in advance of the ceremony, such as a pearl earring, a thin chain, or a small charm necklace, registers as an act of attention that very few guests think to make. The mother of the bride has been spending months helping her daughter prepare for this day, and the small piece on her own collarbone is the small acknowledgment of her own role in the morning.

The bridesmaids' jewelry is traditionally provided by the bride, but a small additional piece from a close friend among the bridesmaids, given before the rehearsal dinner in a small box with a note, also lands well. The piece should be small enough not to compete with whatever the bride has chosen for the bridesmaids to wear, and personal enough to acknowledge the specific friendship inside the broader group.

The personal gesture between close friends is the most flexible category. A wearer who has bought a friend a piece of jewelry for her wedding has chosen something that fits the friend's existing collection, the friend's taste, and the wearer's own relationship to the friend. The piece should not duplicate something the friend already owns, should not be more expensive than the friendship makes natural, and should be something the friend will reach for in the years after the wedding, not something she will put in a drawer and remember as the thing the friend gave her at the wedding.

The dress is still on the chair, the shoes are still under it, and the bag is on the bed beside the dress, with the small pouch inside it that will hold the pearl earrings the wearer will swap into during the dinner if the ceremony earrings get heavy in the heat. The jewelry has been chosen. It will be a pearl strand at the throat, a thin silver chain layered just below it, a small charm at the base of the silver chain, and a ring on the third finger of the right hand. The pieces have been in the dish on the dresser since March, and they will be at the wedding on Saturday. The wearer will walk into the backyard in the late afternoon, hug the friend whose wedding this is, sit through the ceremony, dance until the band ends, and the pieces will be on her body through all of it, doing the work pieces do at the kind of events a wearer will remember for a long time after.