Zara ZW Collection Satin Effect Halter Dress

This summer has been a big wedding summer: Two of my close friends each got married in the last month, and my sister-in-law is getting married in August. I honestly love going to weddings — to celebrate my friends, of course, but also as an excuse to dress up and, in the case of the two weddings recently, plan a trip. The first was my friend Annie’s on the North Fork in her mom’s beautiful backyard garden. The forecast had been iffy leading up to the weekend, and my friend-group chat was abuzz with texts about what everyone was going to wear if it rained. I’d been planning on wearing a floral silk La DoubleJ dress similar to this one (which I was actually sent after interviewing the founder, J.J. Martin, for “What I Can’t Live Without” in 2019), but at the last minute I chickened out of wearing silk in the (predicted) rain. So I went to Zara the night before we drove out to Greenport and left with this yellow dress that prompted someone to ask if it was Lanvin when I wore it at the wedding (not bad!). Not to mention that the swingy shape was comfortable for grazing on some of the best pickled vegetables I’ve had at the really delicious aperitivo, dancing, and cheering on the other guests as they took a swing at the piñata that came out later in the night.

Next up was my friend Misty’s wedding on Lake Garda in Italy. My husband and I planned a weeklong trip around it and were pretty blown away by the foot-of-the-Alps scenery and the lake that was so clear you could see the rocks on the bottom (very different from the seaweed-y lakes I grew up going to in New Hampshire as a kid). The wedding was dreamy: It took place at a villa surrounded by olive trees and lavender bushes, and the dinner menu included trofie with clams and a pretty fabulous cake completely covered in raspberries. It was a really special weekend, and we spent the following week swimming in the lake, reading by the pool, and eating a lot of local seafood. For the last day of the trip we went to Milan, where we went to the top of the Duomo, bopped around the Quadrilatero della Moda, and had dinner at La Libera before flying home the next morning. Of course, it wouldn’t be summer vacation without some shopping … Here’s what I bought for the trips and while traveling.

The dress I wore to my friend’s wedding on the North Fork. An ideal shape for dancing to ABBA and eating carrot cake.