Updated: Groomsmen Attire

We have suits!

So if you remember from awhile back, I decided on putting everyone in suits, rather than tuxes. I especially loved the vested suits - they had a real "vintage" vibe to them.

Now, you would think it would be easy to find a black(ish) vested suit for a reasonable price. Yeah, it's not. I think I found a total of 6 online, half of which were extremely cheap - and I mean cheap - not "inexpensive" (I prefer the latter term since I believe you can do some things inexpensively but beautifully - cheap is just a dirty word...). Anyways, these suits just weren't very good quality.

Quality is my Achilles heel. It's the reason I own more designer handbags then I should. Thankfully it's also FI's so we're usually on the same page. There are absolutely some things in life that we easily decide to go in an inexpensive direction. All the curtains in my house are from the Christmas Tree Shop - I don't think I paid more than $14 a panel for them. Some of my necklaces? $4.00 from Forever 21. And that stuff is fine - it's unimportant and in the case of the necklaces, I'm probably going to break it at some point anyway when I inevitably get caught on something.

But the suit the groom wears to his own wedding? We both refused for him to look cheap. Now this is fine for us, I'm perfectly happy throwing down $500 on a new suit so FI can look fantastic on the wedding day - but I couldn't do that to our groomsmen and our fathers (especially our dads, they have both - along with our step-moms - been incredibly generous to contribute to wedding expenses).

So I had a dilemma - where to find a good quality, 3 piece suit at a reasonable cost? Well, we started at K&G. Neither of us had been before, but several people mentioned they had decent suits for decent prices. I don't think we were prepared for what we got in-store, which was no help whatsoever and racks crammed so thick with suits it was a struggle just to get to them. We looked at each other with that same, wide-eyed, deer in the headlights look. FI suggested we try Men's Wearhouse as we both ran to our car.

Now, I was upset at Men's Wearhouse. I had found and fallen in love with this Calvin Klein vested suit (pictured). Of course, it's one of the more expensive suits in the store. I knew FI would love it when he saw it too. I was assured by their corporate headquarters that the "buy one get one" sale would run until the end of the year.

Well, in the immortal words of my good friend and bridesmaid, Ali, "Somebody lied to you."

Oh yeah they did - the sale ended the last day in July!

But, I thought I'd give them a chance in person. FI raved about their customer service, so I did my best at keeping an open mind. And I'm really glad I did. We got to the store, he put the suit on, and of course loved it. Even though it was a size too large, he looked unbelievable in it. My tummy flitted with butterflies seeing him. But even on sale at $399, I felt that was still too much for the groomsmen/dads to pay. We thought of options; have him in this suit and the guys in something less expensive maybe? I didn't care for that though - although I'm not big on being "matchy-matchy" that was just a little too eclectic for me.

As it turned out, a manager was waiting on us, and he was just wonderful. He let us know on the sly that a new sale would be starting Monday - where we could get buy one suit, and get the second for $100. And since the suit was on sale, basically that would mean we'd get 2 suits for the full price of one. SOLD!

We went in last night and ordered all the suits - I'm ecstatic! Now we just need everyone's measurements and we're good to go. We saved literally, over a thousand dollars - and the price per suit now breaks down to be only $20 more than what a tux would cost to rent. And they get to keep them! So for any brides on the fence about tux vs. suit - go for it!