Picture this: a pregnant woman is invited to attend a wedding. She picks out a plunging V-neck dress that lets it all (kinda) hang out, including cleavage and a slit so deep it stops under her belly button. After posting her outfit online, a debate on fashion faux paus was immediately ignited, and now, said wedding guest is attempting to silence her outfit-haters.
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28-year-old Diana Lively posted a “Wedding OOTD” on TikTok on Sept. 4. In her post, Lively wore a lavender dress with a deep cut in the front, showing off her arms, cleavage and baby bump. The Black internet not only side-eyed her “tacky” and “cheap” outfit, they shared their two cents in her comments.
“A safety pin could have EASILYYYY saved & added sum class to this look,” one person wrote.
A second person commented her dress was, “Inappropriate for a wedding, pregnant or not,” while someone else asked, “Do you hate the bride?”
“This is why weddings have dress codes,” one person wrote, as someone else said it looked like it “came straight from the shein clearance section.”
“I shouldn’t see your belly button at someone else wedding,” another added, while a one social media user said the man with her was “looking like he knows the dress is a bad idea.” He, on the other hand, was on the receiving end of many compliments for his “appropriate” ‘fit.
“He looks classy,” one person said. “He didn’t smile not once,” another noticed, while someone else wrote, “He’s going to a wedding she’s going to a maternity photo shoot.”
But the backlash didn’t seem to phase Lively. She told PEOPLE her outfit made her feel “beautiful, confident and comfortable” in an interview published Sept. 28.
Lively, who admitted in a follow-up TikTok that her dress was “risqué” and called out those “who couldn’t pull it off,” told the outlet that while pregnant, she finds it “difficult to simply choose something to wear.” She added how the “wedding was in an outdoor garden setting, the vibe was summer sunset, floral, ethereal, and whichever dress I chose needed to capture all of that. Ultimately, I was happy because I was certain it did just that.”
Lively also revealed she had the bride’s stamp of approval on the dress, and that the bride “couldn’t wait to see my baby bump in it.”
“If you have to ask, it’s already inappropriate. The bride had manners. The jury is still out on you,” one person wrote. Someone else called out: “’I wanted to show off my belly” at a wedding?? It’s giving “how can I make this about me??”
Others reasoned that her asking the bride for her thoughts on the dress beforehand meant “you already knew it wasn’t appropriate,” in addition to asking the internet for their opinions— which she received. A handful of folks “didn’t see anything wrong” with her dress.
The original post, which has since received over 274K views, 25K likes and over 5K comments, is still causing discourse from “a lot of people [who] were projecting their insecurities onto me because they wouldn’t wear a dress like that and didn’t feel like I had the right to feel good or confident in it.”
“Your dress now is more famous than the wedding, so you definitely took the attention away from the bride,” one person said. But for Lively, she told PEOPLE she has zero regrets and “a firm foundation in my self-identity.”
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