The short answer on Summer Garden Wedding: pick one anchor piece, keep the palette to two colours, and let the shoes decide how formal the whole thing reads. Check whether you will be outdoors or standing, because that decides the shoe before the outfit does. Dress codes are mostly about fabric and coverage rather than length. The pieces that work across two seasons are the mid-weights, which is where most wardrobes are thinnest. The groups below run from the decision that matters most to the ones you make afterwards.

What decides this is shoulder fit, length and how the fabric moves. Everything else is preference. Two from the first group show the range: PatBO's Selene Mesh Flower Applique Midi Dress at $397, and Meshki's Junie Cross-Over Neck Slinky Maxi Dress - Black at $169. The first is the considered buy; the second is the one to start with. Check where the waist seam sits on the model against your own proportions. A dress that fits the shoulders can be taken in anywhere else. One that does not, cannot. A higher price mostly buys materials and finishing, and occasionally it buys nothing at all.

A belt turns a shapeless dress into a deliberate one. Let the dress be the loudest thing you own that day. From the second group, kulanikinis.com's Embroidered Bind Crop Tank - Tropic Blues ($40) is the one that earns its place, because it works in more than one context without being restyled. The third group is smaller and deliberately narrower, dresses, for the decisions you make after the main one. None of this needs the whole group. One piece from each is usually enough.

There are 20 pieces here from 15 brands, $35 to $998, all in stock when this was written. We would not buy all of them, and neither should you. nobodyschild.com's Butter Yellow Polka Dot Jacquard Angela Mini Dress at $35 is the low-risk way in, and macduggal.com's Strapless Satin Floral Embellished Ball Gown at $998 only makes sense if this is a category you already use constantly. Read as a set, they get you close to Summer Garden Wedding without any single purchase being compulsory. Nothing here is included because it is famous, and price is not used as a proxy for quality anywhere on this page. If you take one thing away: buy the one you can picture using this week, not the one you are saving for later.