‘Today’s Hoda Kotb Admits She Once Broke The No. 1 Rule About Wedding Day Fashion: “I Didn’t Even Get It”

Everyone knows there’s a universal rule that wedding guests must abide by to avoid committing the ultimate faux pas: Don’t wear white, because you just might upstage the bride. But Today‘s Hoda Kotb admitted she wasn’t aware this was a rule at all until she wore a white dress to the wedding of NBC fashion correspondent Bobbie Thomas.

The topic came up when Kotb and Jenna Bush Hager were recently discussing a viral post from Laurie DeWitt, who drew criticism after she wore a custom floral dress to her daughter’s wedding that some people felt was not appropriate.

After agreeing that DeWitt looked “stunning” for her daughter’s wedding, Kotb shut down the idea that she could be trying to “steal the spotlight.”

“The bride is gorgeous. And it is the bride’s day, clearly. But I think this whole weirdness about trying to steal the spotlight from the [bride]…it’s a wedding, the bride is in the middle,” she said. “The other people are electrons circling the bride.”

She later added, “I mean, it’s like when people say ‘Oh, don’t wear white, you’re upstaging the bride’. Really? People are gonna be like, ‘Hey, you over there. I’m gonna mistake you [for the bride.]’ What are they thinking?”

As Kotb continued to rant about this wedding faux pas, Bush Hager explained, “Did you know that rule? [Hoda] accidentally wore white to Bobbie Thomas’s wedding. She didn’t know.”

In Kotb’s defense, she had no idea that there was a rule against wearing white to weddings.

“I didn’t even get it,” she confessed. “Until everyone was like, ‘Wow, that was bold,’ I was like, ‘Bold?’ It was available. I didn’t even know what they meant.”

She continued, “It was a mesh-ish, white-ish dress that was clean-ish. Okay, it was all of the -ishes!”

Bush Hager jokingly added, “There was only one stain y’all, okay? So it was worth wearing.”

She then mentioned that DeWitt told Today.com that she had no idea her dress would “spark a debate,” adding that she and her family are “laughing about it.”

Kotb made sure to emphasize that point: “Repeat that part: ‘We’re laughing about it!'”

As they moved on from the topic, Bush Hager noted how weird it is that such a story could even go viral in the first place. Kotb emphasized the point she appeared to be making the entire segment, saying, “Everybody has gone cray, okay, that’s the final note.”

Today with Hoda & Jenna airs on weekdays at 10/9c on NBC.