A mama wrote to me a month before a wedding: “I look in the mirror and do not recognise who is looking back at me, and now I have to do that in a wedding outfit.” A wedding is the first time many of us dress up after a baby, and it arrives with a particular kind of dread: everyone will be looking, there will be photographs that last, and you will have to feed a baby somewhere in the middle of it in clothes that were not built for that.

I have done this with a newborn, and later with small children in tow and a baby who had just discovered noise. I got it wrong before I got it right, and what I learned was that the dress is maybe a third of it. The rest is a handful of small decisions made the day before, which is exactly the kind of thinking a tired brain cannot do at seven in the morning with a baby on the hip. So I made the list for you.

Ten things, in the order they come up. None of them cost much. All of them are the difference between standing in the corridor in your coat and being at the table when the speeches start.

1. The dress must open at the front, with one hand

This is the rule everything else hangs on. Wrap, faux wrap, button-front, a slip with a strap that drops, a two-piece with a wrap top. Nothing that zips at the back, nothing that lifts over your head, nothing you need two hands and a mirror for. Try the opening at home, holding a bag of flour in the other arm. If it is awkward in the bedroom it will be impossible in a marquee.

I have written the eight shapes that pass this test for summer, fall and winter weddings. Pick the season and start there.

2. Wear the bra you will actually feed in

Not the one that looks best under the dress. The one you can unclip one-handed without looking, that you have worn before, that does not dig by hour four. A soft wireless nursing bra with a drop cup, in a colour close to the dress. Elegance at a wedding is mostly not fidgeting, and the bra is where the fidgeting starts.

If the dress is strappy or low, a strapless nursing bra exists, and the time to find out whether yours works is Tuesday, not Saturday.

3. A clip-down tank under the dress, in the dress’s colour

Under a wrap or a button-front, a thin clip-down nursing tank in a tone close to the dress means that when you open the dress there is still a layer, and the tank clips down for the feed. It also holds breast pads flat and catches the leak that would otherwise mark the dress.

Pads, and spare pads in the bag. Two sets. A wedding is long.

From the capsules

The Year Round Capsule

Two hundred nursing-friendly outfits from fifty-six pieces, fifty for every season, laid out and then worn. $29 once, yours to keep.

See the capsule →

4. Pick the colour for your face, not for the theme

You are tired. The colour near your face should know that. Dusty rose, soft blue, burgundy, forest, camel, navy: these lift a face on four hours of sleep. Black, bright white and acid brights tend to make the tiredness the first thing in the photograph. If you are not sure which family is yours, the Colour Season Quiz is two minutes and free, and it is worth doing before you buy anything.

A print on a dark ground hides a mark better than a plain. Small florals and soft stripes are a nursing mama’s friends.

5. Decide the cover question before you leave the house

Some mamas want a cover, some do not, and both are right. What matters is deciding in advance so you are not negotiating with yourself at the table. If you want one, a large soft pashmina in a colour that goes with the dress is a shawl in the church, a cover at the table and a blanket in the pram, and it looks like part of the outfit rather than equipment.

If you do not want one, the wrap dress and the tank are your cover. Sit with your back to the room if that helps, and carry on.

6. Ask for a seat on the end of a table, near a door

One message to whoever is doing the seating plan: “I have the baby with me, could we be on the end near a door?” Nobody has ever said no to me. It means you can stand and sway without climbing over people, step out if you need to, and come back without the whole table turning.

Ask about a quiet room too. Most venues have one. Knowing where it is before you need it is half the calm.

7. Feed just before you leave, and once more just before the ceremony

You cannot schedule a baby, but you can stack the odds. A full feed as the last thing before the car, and a top-up in the car park before you walk in, buys you most of a ceremony. Then feed when the baby asks, not when you think you should wait; a hungry baby at a wedding is louder than any feed.

Bring the bottle if you combination feed. No one at that wedding is keeping score of how the baby was fed.

8. Flat shoes, and a bag that leaves your hands free

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You will stand for the photographs, sway through at least one course and walk a corridor with a baby on your shoulder. A flat sandal, a ballet flat or a low block heel, worn before, with a plaster in the bag for luck. A crossbody bag, or a small shoulder bag with a strap long enough to wear across the body, so both hands are available for the baby and the glass.

Ten nursing-friendly outfits built on ballet flats if you want to see how dressed a flat shoe can look.

9. Hair up, one piece of jewellery, lipstick in the bag

Hair up because a feeding baby pulls hair down. One piece of jewellery because a necklace is a toy and earrings are a target; pick the one you can live without. A lipstick in the bag, applied once in the car and once after the first feed, because it is the fastest way to feel like a guest again after a corridor.

This is not about standards. It is about the three things that undo themselves during a feed, and having a thirty-second way back.

10. Be in the photograph

You will want to step out of the group photo because of the mark on the dress, or the hair, or the body. Do not. In ten years nobody will see the mark and everybody will see that you were there with the baby. I have the photographs where I stepped out, and they are the ones I regret.

Stand at the end so you can leave if the baby cries. Then stay.

The woman in the mirror who does not look like you yet is going to a wedding. She is going to feed a baby there, probably twice, and she is going to be in the photographs. None of that needs a new body or a new personality. It needs a dress that opens, a bra that works, a seat near the door, and the decision to stay in the picture. That is a list, and lists can be done on four hours of sleep.

If you want the dresses on a body before you choose, the Year Round Capsule has the wrap dress and the button-front laid out and worn across the year, with three pictures of you in them on the house. If the dress you are holding in a shop might or might not open, Will it feed tells you from a screenshot, free. And if you want the whole outfit chosen for you the morning of, from what you already own, that is Anah inside the Atelier.

Go to the wedding. You are a guest, not the staff. The focus is on you, mama.