More importantly, it's now very expensive to check the extra suitcases required.
We hit a happy medium by dressing a little more nicely during the day as well and then not needing to change for dinner. Nothing really casual gets packed in the first place. Dress shorts aren't any less comfortable.
I like this approach -- honestly, for myself I just aim to have something other than a t-shirt to change into for the non-costume, non-formal nights, because I do love wearing my t-shirts during the day. No one batted an eye the one night I did show up in a printed t-shirt, but I liked coming to dinner dressed just a tiny bit less casually. Also, "formal" for me was a knee-length dress, because I like to be comfortable on vacation and that's what's comfortable for me.
No need to carry 14+ days worth of clothes. We can pack enough for 2 of us for 10 nights in one suitcase and two backpacks. That includes my husband's suit and a fancy dress for me. A change of accessories for the same dress for multiple fancy dress nights takes hardly any space.
Of course, that can mean you would need to do laundry, something some people will never do on vacation.
Well...yeah, no, I wouldn't do laundry on a 10-night vacation. 14-night? Yeah, I'll find the time. 10-night? Nope. It's at the upper limit of trips I'll do without planning to do laundry, though.
The other issue I personally had, packing-wise, was that I was bringing two full costumes (one for Pirate Night, one for MDAS). While they shared the same boots and leggings, they still took up a ton of space -- those boots are huge, and then there were multiple garments for each costume (and a floor-length cape for an adult, when made out of a heavy enough fabric to drape nicely, is not particularly compact when folded). The costumes were a
much higher priority for me than fancy clothes for formal night, and if push had come to shove I absolutely would have left my dress at home in order to make room for my Dr. Strange outfit. I did bring a dress (knee-length, not actually all that formal) and a couple pairs of earrings, and I did dress up a little for formal night, but that leads into another issue....
Not all people even own formal clothing. I know that with
DCL's price point it's pretty likely that if you can afford the cruise, you can afford formal wear...except there's the part where I only own two or three dresses and none of them are what I'd call formal. Just because I can technically afford to buy formal clothing doesn't mean I actually own any -- it's simply not a priority in my regular life, so I don't expend the money, time, and energy on shopping for those kinds of garments. Then I think about families with kids, and I think it's no wonder at all if people with children don't buy little suits and formal dresses for their offspring, because that's expensive and the kids are just going to outgrow it in a heartbeat. While I get the appeal of everyone on the cruise dressing up all at once, I look at it about on the level of Pirate Night or MDAS: I wouldn't demand that
everyone go to the trouble and expense of dressing up as a pirate or a superhero just because I would like to do so, so why would we expect
everyone to go to the trouble and expense of formal dress?
Finally, I think the "14 days' worth of clothing for a 7 night cruise" may have been a reference to the idea that if you're dressing casually for daytime and changing into something a little nicer for dinner every night, that would indeed require you to pack twice as many outfits as days if you aren't planning to wash and/or re-wear anything.