Dressing the Part: Grooms Edition

The men of the wedding officially have clothing! Mr. BB and I headed downtown to Men's Wearhouse yesterday afternoon for our official tux-seeking appointment. We chose Men's Wearhouse over other comparable businesses for a couple of reasons. First, with five paid rentals, Mr. BB gets either a free rental, or a free suit up to a $400 value. We opted for the free rental so that his day-of attire would cost us $0 (ahhh, such a beautiful concept!) Second, Men's Wearhouse coordinates their color selection with David's Bridal, which is where our bridesmaid dresses were purchased. That was a major plus!

We met with our consultant, Nicole, who was pretty awesome. She really made the process easy. Our first choice was to pick the vest. Mr. BB wanted to stick out from his groomsman, and since we knew they would be in the color 'Lapis' to match the BM dresses, he gravitated to an ivory vest to match my dress. So far, so good, huh? It seemed like a natural progression to put our father's in black so that they had their own clothing identity aside from the bridal party. An added plus (which I hadn't even considered prior to our appointment) was that we were able to pick a sleek, modern vest pattern that was available in all three colors. Score!

Personal Photo - black, ivory and lapis vest (sorry for the poor photo quality!)

Personal Photo - Sleek vest pattern

Each vest was paired with a perfectly-matching bow-tie or tie option. Mr. BB opted for the tie. I agreed that this was the most fitting as we're planning to be married on a rooftop garden, so while we consider our event to be formal, it's certainly not black-tie. He also opted to pick white dress shirts with a pleated pattern. I liked the added character of the pleats and am happy Mr. BB chose white as the ivory shirts looked, well, dirty.

Next up was picking the jacket. Mainly, the options were to have one button or two. Or to have regular pocket slits or have fabric covering them. I'm sure there was some sort of fancy, mens-wear lingo used to describe the different pocket designs, but, um, I didn't pay much attention. I did take a picture, though!

Personal Photo

Mr. BB opted for the middle option. Two buttons and regular pocket slits. The remaining decisions were left entirely up to Mr. BB. He opted for plain, black shoes, black cuff links for the guys and white for him, and, his one must-have option: pocket squares. Currently, each guy will have a white pocket square to match their dress shirts. Mr. BB is up in the air about this one as he'd prefer a purple pocket-square to match the guys' vests but they don't offer them in lapis, only plum. The fact that the pocket-squares don't come in all of the colors offered by Men's Wearhouse is weird to me, and slightly disappointing, but oh well.

Total tux cost is $199/piece. However, we were armed with a $40 off coupon for each tux which brought the price down to $159. An additional $7 can be take off the price if the guys opt to rent only one dress shirt versus two (Mr. BB was afraid if it was a hot and sweaty day the guys would like to have another shirt if needed, but mostly, I think it's because he knows he'll inevitably spill something on his shirt within ten minutes of the reception!)

Men's Wearhouse offers a great online tool where we can log into our "group" and view each individual item we've chosen. It breaks the attire down by the specific individual, so clicking on Mr. BB will show his clothing, while clicking on the groomsman or our fathers will show their selections. We can also keep track of which guy has had his fitting, picked up his tux, and returned it. Since this is information that Mr. BB likely won't communicate to me, I like to know that I can simply log in and see who's lagging behind on their duties and help keep them in line (in a very non-bridezilla way, I promise!)

Another wedding-related decision is in the books!

Is your groom opting for a tux or suit? Have you picked it out yet? Did you let your FI make the decisions or did you give him some guidelines to work within?