Three Men and a Uniform: Dressing the Boys

So, we all know what I am wearing, we've settled on what my girl's are wearing, and even my mother has finally picked a dress!! (I kid you not, she's been through about 12 dresses to make this final decision. I am trying to get her to agree to let me post pictures...currently I'm threatened with death upon posting.)

But what about the boys?

Adam, the Best Man (*J) and my youngest/eldest brother also fellow CG pilot to Adam (*...crap. I was going to make him *M in following with the pattern of my non-naming naming system, but that my ID too! Damn non creative parents who could only couldn't create new initial sets! Oh yeah, in my immediate fam, you are either a MRD or a JWD - thats it! ok, we'll call him *G... for goober). ANYWAY - Adam, *J, and *G will be wearing Coast Guard Whites uniform. Something like this...

Yup, thats Top Gun. Yes, its Navy not Coast Guard, but its almost the same uniform. And, frankly, I just love that movie and will use any excuse to reference it. Inaccuracies in the film? Loads of them. Cheese factor? Mega-check! Tom Cruise crazy politics? I don't care. I just like it! So, feel free to roll your eyes and just bite me, cause right along side all the Disney references will be some Top Gun and probably some Hunt for Red October. Oh, and I'll have to get a picture of it, but we made a Mii for my Dad and it looks EXACTLY like Tom Skerrit!! hehehe.

So this is actually a photo of Adam and I from *G's wedding a few years ago. Ignore my pudgy face and Adam's sleepy look please!

Image courtesy of Pasty Brown (*G's photog).

Here's the snafu, we've got 3 civilian groomsmen... what are they supposed to wear!?

The knee-jerk reaction is a white tuxedo a la..
A couple things wrong with this. For starters, the white uniform they'll be sporting (from here on out dubbed "Whites") is actually equivalent to a suit, not a tux. The tux equivalent looks like this... and isn't really favored...
More often then not, they are mistaken for waitstaff.
The other issue is that the white tuxes, or even white suits available in Panama City are..umm... limited. The ones I saw struck me as looking like a waiter, or looking like P-Diddy (or is it Puff Daddy again?)

So we dropped the stark white idea and decided that the civilian guys aren't going to look like they are in uniform, so might as well just be different and not try to blend in. So then began the search for a suit that would fill some requirements:

• Look appropriate on the beach
• Not clash with Whites
• Affordable
• Rent-able or re-wearable

2 of the 3 civi-groomsmen are still in the "broke-ass" phase of life where a nice suit isn't exactly affordable or needed, and the third works in Manhattan where he wears lots of suits... lots of DARK suits. I never realized how much of a southern thing light colored suits are. After A LOT of searching, waaayy too much "maybe. I'll think about it." We finally picked one! It was at Men's Wearhouse, so all the civi-groomsmen had one nearby they could go to, and it was on SALE!
It's a little darker than ideal, but oh well! (Am I the only bride that really just doesn't care THAT much?) So for about $40 more than renting a similar suit, they will own the (above) Sean John 3 button suit, a white shirt under it, and, we've already got the ties! Done and Done!

(I'll tell you a little more about the actual fun of getting these and the impressive way Men's Wearhouse handled things in my vendor review that will be coming in the near future.)

Oh, and I don't know what Adam's dad will be wearing yet, but just for fun - here's my dad at another wedding wearing his "wedding suit"... check out the wedding tie. :-) Oh yeah, that's my dad. And his socks totally matched his tie.

Anyone else find it harder to dress the boys than the girls??