Kate Middleton's Fashion Mishap. Hey, It Happens.

Imagine the pressure of going to an event that Kate Middleton, the Duchess of Cambridge, and one of the most-photographed women in the world, was also going to be attending. And then triple it. That's what happened to one unidentified woman, who arrived at a wedding in England this weekend only to discover that she was wearing the same outfit as Middleton.

Lucy Meade, sister of Prince William's close pal James Meade, and Charlie Budgett were married this weekend in the English countryside. Both Kate and another guest arrived wearing a light-blue M Missoni tweed coat from the Italian brand's 2010 collection. Kate has worn the braid-trimmed coat several times before, including during an appearance with Queen Elizabeth and Camilla Parker-Bowles, which is true to her style of re-wearing her favorite pieces.

Luckily, both women styled their coats differently. Kate wore a dark-blue fascinator and a matching clutch, while the other woman, a blonde, sported simple pearl earrings, a white beaded bag, and bright red heels.  Kate appeared to be wearing a floral dress underneath her coat, as a small bit of the fabric peeked out from under her hem.

How was a fashion faux pas like this one able to even happen in the first place? Unlike Hollywood events, where stars’ stylists will sometimes collaborate to make sure their clients don’t show up in the same dresses, the average person can’t call up fellow wedding guests and find out what they’re all planning to wear. Top design houses even employ people whose jobs are to negotiate exclusives with different celebrities – if an A-list star is going to wear one of your gowns to a big event like the Oscars, you want to do everything you can to keep them happy.

That said, sometimes it happens anyway. Jamie Lee Curtis and Sigourney Weaver both showed up on the red carpet for the premiere of their movie "You Again" wearing the same green one-shouldered David Meister dress, but considering that the movie has a scene where the two women show up at an event in the same dress, their opening-night snafu was probably a well-executed inside joke. And there have also been near-misses. Although Anne Hathaway had been prepared to wear a Valentino dress to the 2013 Oscars, she reportedly changed her mind at the last minute when she found out that her "Les Miz" costar Amanda Seyfried would be wearing a similar style. She switched to a pale pink Prada column to accept her Oscar for Best Supporting Actress.

What’s the best way to cope when you show up at a party and see someone in the same outfit as you? Take a page from model Jaime King and embrace the other person – literally or figuratively. When King showed up at a London event in 2011, she discovered that fellow guest Nicky Hilton was wearing the same cheetah-print French Connection minidress as her. Considering that the party was in honor of the French Connection brand, it wasn’t too surprising that partygoers would want to wear looks from the latest collection, and the two celebs laughed off their twinsie moment by posing for photos together.

And if you’re a guest at an event where two people arrive in the same outfit, don’t try to compare them to each other. Instead, follow the example of the bride’s mom at this weekend’s royal-attended wedding: when asked whether Kate or the other guest looked better in their blue coats, she simply commented that both were "absolutely fabulous."