I did not particularly enjoy the process of shopping for my wedding dress.

It’s not that I didn’t enjoy the moment when I said “this is the dress I want,” I just didn’t have much fun going from store to store, trying on loads of dresses with little privacy and being told things like “I can tell you’re plain,” or, “you don’t have much of a chest” by saleswomen who were trying to convince me to spend thousands of dollars in their store. (For the record, the store I ultimately bought my dress from did NOT do any of those things to me!)

But, if I’m being honest, I was a lot more nervous about finding a place to rent the guys’ tuxedos from than I was about finding my own wedding-day outfit.

We have male members of the wedding party scattered across 3 different states. Simply going down to the local tailor and ordering up 8 tuxedos was not going to work for us, because the chances of getting all those guys to come into town for both measurements and to pick up/try on their tuxes are slim to none. Never having had need for a tuxedo myself, I had no clue which places were the best to check out, so I turned to the local chat forums on TheKnot, where I was told to try Savvi Formalwear, and to avoid Men’s Wearhouse at all costs. Well… that’s not fair. One bride told me Men’s Wearhouse worked out great for her wedding party, but she was the only one with a favorable opinion.

You may have noticed that when it comes to our wedding, Alex and I seem to be involved in a comedy of errors. Nothing we think is a great idea seems to work out the first time – planning our rehearsal dinner is a case in point. Tuxedo shopping was no exception. I had looked up both Savvi’s and MW’s websites and found both had locations in the Danbury Mall. So we headed there over the holiday break, thinking we’d check out both places and make a decision once we got a feel for each store.

… Guess what? Savvi seems to have closed their Danbury location. Moreover, MW doesn’t rent tuxes out of their mall location, they want you to go to their location across the street if you’re only looking to rent!

Being that Savvi was nowhere to be found, and therefore would not be convenient for 2 members of the wedding party, we had to cross it off our list. That left Men’s Wearhouse. I was pretty skeptical of MW when we walked in – after all, I had been hearing negative reviews about them for a couple of months now. But I’ve got to say, the 2 guys we spoke with there seemed to know their stuff, and weddings seem to be most of what they do. Alex told me that a tux is a tux, so we decided to go ahead and order ours through them. I’ll admit this: a big factor in making this decision was the fact that Alex would get his tux rental for free because of the total number of rentals we are going to be doing.

After a bit of talk, we decided Alex will be wearing a black/black tux combination, while the groomsmen will be wearing a black/sage combo. The bridesmaid dresses are also black with sage, so I think everything will match pretty well. I’m undecided what colors we’ll do for our little ringbearer, but they don’t want to measure him until May anyway, so there is plenty of time for that! Here is an image from the Men’s Wearhouse website of the sage vest, so everyone knows what I’m talking about (sage doesn’t seem to mean the same thing to everyone):

We asked a lot of questions while we were there, and I feel like we’re OK about our decision to go with Men’s Wearhouse for right now. If the wedding comes and we have a disaster, I will certainly post about it!

1 person likes this post.

Unlike

© 2010, The Table Has Shoes (and Other Ambiguities). All rights reserved.

No related posts.