An engagement is the most awkward event in the season to dress for. A wedding has a clear register and a sangeet has none at all, but an engagement sits between them: usually indoors, usually seated, usually smaller, and almost always the event where the photographs are closest and most posed.
The formality is higher than people expect. Because the guest list is short, the proportion of the room that will be in full occasionwear is high, and an outfit that would be comfortably dressed at a 300-person reception can read underdressed at a 60-person engagement. If you are choosing between two things, the more formal one is usually right.
The restraint is equally real but narrower than the folklore suggests. The convention that matters is not avoiding a colour family but avoiding the specific thing the couple is wearing — and at an engagement that is most often a red, a deep pink or a gold. Ivory and white are safer here than at a Western wedding, and black is now unremarkable at an evening engagement in Australia, though it still reads as a choice at a daytime one.
What is genuinely worth avoiding is a silhouette that needs managing. You will be seated for a long stretch, standing for photographs at short notice, and probably greeting people in a line. A floor-length unpinned drape and a dupatta that needs a hand are both things you will come to resent by the second hour.
