“I think wedding dresses are such a big expense and if you can find a way to wear them again, you definitely should,” Aja Dang tells PEOPLE
Aja Dang believes that if you spend a lot of money on a wedding dress, you can wear it twice!
So on Sept. 4 — when the content creator, 36, and her husband Brian Puspos, 37, attended Beyoncé’s Renaissance tour birthday concert in Los Angeles, which happened to fall on their first wedding anniversary — they decided to arrive at none other than their original wedding dress. “When @beyonce has a concert on your 1st wedding anniversary, get your wedding dress out of storage,” Dang wrote on Instagram.
The Beyoncé superfans first went viral last year for their wedding dance to Beyoncé’s “Cuff It.” In the TikTok video, which has more than 28.4 million views, Puspos, a famous photographer, choreographed a dance for him and Dang on their wedding day.
“I just felt like it was the right opportunity,” Dang tells PEOPLE, reflecting on her decision to wear the dress. “Specifically for us as a couple, September 4th means a lot. Not only is it Beyoncé’s birthday, but it was our first wedding anniversary, and we also went viral for our Beyoncé wedding dance, so I thought it was an opportunity to finally wear my wedding dress for the first time since my wedding.”
Dang says the moment she came across her now-wedding dress – a white pearl, chiffon and drape dress by Sarah Seven – she was “hooked”.
“I actually went dress shopping by myself,” she remembers. “I didn’t really want to make a big fuss about bringing all my friends, my mom went with me once… but I made the final decision all by myself.”
But when it came to styling a dress for Beyoncé’s concert, Dang wanted to mix things up a bit. Her mom suggested adding a “disco ball” feel. “My mom paid for the dress, but I just didn’t want to spend that much money to wear something just once,” she says. “I felt it was a waste.”
See All The Best Celeb Outfits From Beyoncé’s Renaissance World Tour Shows (PICs)
Aja Dang wears a wedding dress on her wedding day.
Rhema Jaime
Ahead of the concert, Dang experimented with different ways she could style the dress to look more like Beyoncé, including attaching a train to the dress or having someone hem the dress to make it lower. She says she also thought of ways to “shower pearls” in her TikTok as an ode to Beyoncé’s “Heated” lyrics.
“Honestly, it was really hard and I was freaking out because I just didn’t know what to do,” she tells PEOPLE.
“I also didn’t want to completely destroy the original dress. I was just looking for ideas on Pinterest and I found this beautiful dress,” she adds. “I don’t know who it was from or where the pin was from, but it was just a bodice and it was studded with pearls and these brooches and that’s exactly what we are, my friends. I also tried to do it with the dress.”
All the Celebrities Who Attended Beyonce’s ‘Renaissance’ World Tour
In the midst of all the planning, Dang notices that she forgot to tell Puspos about her plans to repurpose her dress. As a TikToker, she says that sometimes she just posts things on social media and forgets to tell her husband.
“I think he was more worried about how it would stand up to my wedding dress,” she says. “We decided he would just wear his wedding suit, but we took his shirt off and had him dazzle it a bit and he ended up looking great.”
The whole look was created the night before the fashion show. Dang says her friends Erick Orzo and Devin & Athena, who are stylists in Los Angeles, spent about three hours beading the dress and doing Dang’s makeup.
“This was actually my fourth Renaissance concert,” she says. “At first we didn’t plan to go, but after Brian and I went to Barcelona for the first time, we just decided it was really important for us to go on her birthday. We knew it would be a great concert, and for us it would also be an anniversary present.”
“Wedding dresses are such a big expense and if you can find a way to wear them again, you definitely should,” she says. “I plan to wear my wedding dress again. Somehow, I don’t think this will be my last time.”
Categories: Trends
Source: HIS Education