The best part about going to weddings in the warmer months is the chance to put on a fabulous dress, some sky-high heels and easily, breezily be on your way without another thought to your ensemble. Thus it is quite the harsh reality check when the cold arrives and you suddenly realize that you don’t have anything quite fancy enough to wear over that fabulous dress.

Ladies, we feel your pain. We were at a wedding in Chicago a couple of weeks ago, and it was cold, and we panicked. We panicked, that is, until we remembered the godsend we’d thought to throw in our overstuffed garment bag at the last minute: Thread Social’s tuxedo coatdress. It was quite literally the perfect thing to throw over our little one-shouldered frock, just perfectly warm enough to take us from hotel to taxi to wedding and back again. (And we won’t even get into the ridiculous amount of compliments we got when wearing the coat.) We do realize we are tooting our own horn here, but we are doing it for your own good, we promise.

(Above: Thread Social’s Tuxedo Coat dress. Buy it here, and thank us later.)

Last Thursday: to say it was a rainy day would be a gross understatement. The sky was black, the rain was sideways, the wind was a-blowin’.  The kind of day everyone looks out the window, shudders, and dreams of the moment they can sprint home for the night, throw on PJs and cozy up on the couch with a good book.

Well. As luck would have it, last Thursday happened to be the day of Thread’s little soiree in honor of our ten year anniversary. Needless to say, the weather stressed us out just a wee. (Brides-to-be out there, you can feel our pain, non?) We worried. We fretted. Would no one come to the party? Was all our hard work and planning for naught? The custom letterpress invites by Regas? The yummy bites from Callahan Catering? The wines we painstakingly picked out ourselves (on one particularly fun day at the office)? The perfect, twinkly, exposed brick-y space we found for the event, complete with dahlias, snowberries and lowlit candles everywhere? The five new bridesmaid collections we worked on day and night just for the occasion??!!

Well. It turns out we totally underestimated the friends, family, editors, buyers, vendors, brides, event planners and photographers who have supported us over the past ten years. (Never again!) Not only did all these lovely people trek out in the wind and rain to celebrate with us, but they stayed, and chatted, and drank, and ate, and laughed, and mingled, and ogled the new collections.

All in all? It was a near-perfect night, joyous and celebratory and exactly what we hoped it would be. Made us want to do this for another ten (or twenty or thirty) years.

(Above, two of the new collections we debuted at our event: at left, our Blossom collection; at right, our Ethereal collection. All five new collections will be up on our site in the next month, promise!)