Santa Monica Wedding: Perfect Occasion to Wear-Test Divadend Footwear Prototype

I was excited to wear-test an early prototype of our Greenway pump at my sister's wedding in Santa Monica knowing that the occasion would be glamorous and entail hours of standing and dancing.

Me, fourth from left, wear-testing an early prototype of the Divadend Newbury

No small amount of effort went into dressing for the event.  As members of the wedding party, my siblings agreed that we would wear navy blue. I’m not exaggerating when I say that I tried on about 30 navy dresses (most ordered online and then shipped back) from every store I could think of before my other sister texted me a picture of my eventual dress as she walked through Bloomingdale’s in Chicago.

We had our hair and make-up professionally done on the day of the wedding. Given the Hollywood surroundings, the stylists and photographers in L.A. are the real deal. For instance, I showed the same picture (of Princess Kate’s hair) to the hairstylist at the Dry Bar in Santa Monica that I’ve shown at the Dry Bar in Boston, but the process and result were way more elaborate. The make-up artist was recruited by my sister from a TV production set. Needless to say, my shoes had to measure up in appearance.  

Wearing the Divadend prototype shoes as I literally “stood up” for the bride during the one-hour ceremony followed by a gala cocktail hour certainly put them to the test. It confirmed our objective to have a shock absorbing rubber heel and sole with a heavily cushioned insole with arch and metatarsal support.  The heel height felt just right – high enough to feel elegant but comfortable through four hours of dancing to DJs Haute Mobile Disco.

As the evening wore on, Caroline and I were not surprised to see many guests ditch their heels in favor of bare feet and flip flops. In fact, there was actually a basket of flip flops provided in anticipation of guests needing relief from their shoes!! Check out the picture that Caroline giddily snapped of the abandoned sparkly Manolos perched on the chair next to the owner’s Louis Vuitton bag.  

 

Abandoned Manolos perched next to the owner’s Louis Vuitton bag

Wearing the prototype throughout the wedding confirmed that we were getting close to our eventual product yet provided insight into further edits that we ended up incorporating.    

We can’t wait to share the results when our shoes become available for sale online during one week in December!

The view from Terrenea Resort where we feted my sister days before her wedding