Groom’s shopping guide

Buy­ing a suit for your wed­ding sounds pretty straight­for­ward at first, but when you get into the details there’s a lot to think about.

There are many options for buy­ing a wed­ding suit: you need to think about cut and colour, where to buy your wed­ding suit, what fab­ric to choose for the sea­son and how much to spend.

Think you’re done? No… acces­sories come next, and yes if you’re wear­ing a hand­ker­chief you might need to get one to match the brides­maids’ dresses.

Our groom’s shop­ping guide will help you get started with every­thing you need to buy.

Buy­ing a suit for your wedding

As a groom to be, this is your biggest pur­chase. The price for a suit can vary mas­sively depend­ing where you buy. If you rel­ish the oppor­tu­nity to look amaz­ing, now’s the time to splash out on your very own tai­lored suit. If you’re on a bud­get go to the high street. If you’re hav­ing a vin­tage wed­ding, explore your near­est clus­ter of vin­tage stores: there are far more men’s suits in there than you’d think, and — as they always say — the qual­ity back then was far supe­rior to what you would find in the high street today.

Quick guide to buy­ing a wed­ding suit

Wed­ding suit styles

The tra­di­tional wed­ding suit style is the morn­ing suit. A morn­ing suit is a 3 piece suit with trousers, waist­coat and long jacket. It looks great with a top hat and suits very for­mal or large wed­dings. If you want to dress up on your wed­ding day, then this is the one to go for.

Less for­mal and more con­tem­po­rary, the lounge suit is more pop­u­lar as a wed­ding suit. Still a 3 piece, but with a shorter jacket, the lounge suit offers more options for you to co-ordinate your waist­coat and acces­sories with the bride’s outfit.

For an infor­mal wed­ding there’s a good choice of con­tem­po­rary suits from slim fit­ting designs which really make a state­ment to clas­sic two piece suits.

Wed­ding suit fabrics

Suit fab­rics vary, so if you’re hav­ing a sum­mer wed­ding and you don’t want to be too uncom­fort­able, look for a linen blend suit (noth­ing floppy, don’t worry — but the fab­ric will be lighter). For win­ter, a pure wool or wool blend fab­ric will keep you warm and look­ing cool.

Wed­ding suit colours

Black and grey are the clas­sic wed­ding suit colours, with choco­late brown becom­ing more pop­u­lar in recent years as brides go for choco­late and pink wed­ding themes. For sum­mer wed­dings abroad, lighter shades are pop­u­lar, from sil­ver greys to stone and even white suits.

Buy­ing a bespoke wed­ding suit

Vis­it­ing a bespoke tai­lor is an expe­ri­ence you’ll either love or dread. If it’s right up your street then go for it. The prices aren’t as high as you’d think, and you will get a per­fectly fit­ting suit, plus all the advice you could dream of from your tai­lor. You might not need to read any more of this arti­cle (but go on, you never know!)

King and Allen offer bespoke suits start­ing at £350, with advice on the dif­fer­ent styles of suit and a full ser­vice for wed­ding par­ties. Check their loca­tions and fit­ting dates online: they have fit­tings all over the UK at dif­fer­ent times and will post your suit when it’s made.

Buy­ing your wed­ding suit from a qual­ity tailor

Even if you don’t fancy being mea­sured up for your wed­ding suit, you can go for a very high qual­ity suit with some of the best Eng­lish suit retail­ers. These are usu­ally smaller busi­nesses with per­sonal cus­tomer ser­vice, and they’ll offer you good, hon­est advice on what to buy.

Brook Tav­erner have a great choice of suits, with their Avalino wed­ding suit at just £190, other suits around the £300 mark and the full morn­ing suit for £305.

For a wider col­lec­tion of lounge suits I’d also rec­om­mend TM Lewin (they are famed for their shirts and do great acces­sories as well). Suits are made from Merino wool, and they offer more sizes than many suit retailers.

Buy­ing your wed­ding suit on the high street

High street retail­ers and big brand web­sites sell good suits these days, and you can’t go wrong with the best of these.

Bhs are very well known for their wed­ding ranges, and even if you don’t shop there usu­ally, I’d rec­om­mend hav­ing a look at their wed­ding suit col­lec­tion. Suits are around the £100 mark, with jack­ets between £40 and £80, and trousers around £30  — £40 in the wed­ding collection.

They have a nice col­lec­tion of clas­sic suits, as well as waist­coats, cra­vats and shirts — in fact you could go for it and get your wed­ding shoes from Bhs, then dress your page­boys in one fell swoop!

For a more con­tem­po­rary look, try Ben Sher­man. Their suits are good qual­ity and more fash­ion­able than most. You’ll be mak­ing a state­ment in a Ben Sher­man suit!

If you’d rather shop around, then Deben­hams is great for a wide vari­ety of suits: they stock Ben Sher­man as well as Jasper Con­ran, Red Her­ring and more — with great qual­ity, clas­sic and con­tem­po­rary suits, it’s a good start if you’re not sure what will suit you best. (Sorry!)

Hir­ing a wed­ding suit

It’s the most pop­u­lar option for grooms and the bridal party: hir­ing your wed­ding suit. Moss Suit Hire are the best known brand, and tend to have plenty of pro­mo­tional offers: as I’m writ­ing this arti­cle, the groom goes free — so hire more than four wed­ding out­fits and get a free­bie — it’s a pretty good deal. Moss know their busi­ness well and offer suit hire pack­ages (suit, waist­coat, shirt, tie and hand­ker­chief) for around £85 per person.

A higher qual­ity option is Jack Bun­neys. Jack Bun­neys is a for­mal hire spe­cial­ist and retailer of high qual­ity, high end cloth­ing for the mod­ern man. They have a proud tra­di­tion of cus­tomer ser­vice and excel­lence and are becom­ing very pop­u­lar indeed. They have a very use­ful blog with good advice for grooms, and their atten­tion to detail and pride in their busi­ness is refresh­ing. Highly recommended.

Choos­ing your wed­ding shirt

I absolutely love Green and Jacks. They’re bespoke shirt mak­ers in Lon­don, and their shirts are the best qual­ity you’re likely to find. If you’re in or near Lon­don you should def­i­nitely visit their store to find out more. If not, their web­site is fan­tas­tic, with a step by step guide to buy­ing your bespoke wed­ding shirt.

Go to www.GreenandJacks.com and click on Bespoke Shirts in the menu. Then choose every detail of your shirt from the fab­ric, col­lar shape, but­ton style, cuff style and even a mono­gram — all online. Expect to pay £79 or more for your bespoke shirt — but realise when it arrives it will be worth it’s weight in gold.

Emmett of Lon­don are also pretty fan­tas­tic for bespoke wed­ding shirts, and they pro­duce over four hun­dred designs per sea­son with new styles avail­able every week. They only ever make 25 shirts in any one design, so if you’re look­ing for some­thing exclu­sive, this is the shop for you. Either buy ready-to-wear or have your own wed­ding shirt made to order.

Groom’s wed­ding accessories

Once you have your suit, waist­coat and shirt sorted, it’s time to focus on all the details of your wed­ding attire. Acces­sories are just as impor­tant for grooms as they are for brides. Here’s a list of the basic acces­sories to consider:

• shoes
• your wed­ding tie or cravat
• socks (they’ll fea­ture in the wed­ding pho­tos, so be creative!)
• cuf­flinks
• top hat

Wed­ding shoes for grooms

If you’re splash­ing out on a suit, you should def­i­nitely make sure you have the shoes to do it jus­tice. Wed­ding shoes for grooms should be smooth and ele­gant, so avoid any­thing with lots of pat­tern or detail. You may have great shoes already, but look at them care­fully: will they scrub up to be pris­tine for your wed­ding day, and will they com­ple­ment the wed­ding suit you’ve cho­sen? If you’re not sure, then it might be time to buy dress shoes. The main thing to remem­ber is you’ll want to wear them again (when your friends get mar­ried if noth­ing else!) so choose carefully.

Buy­ing dress shoes involves as many choices as buy­ing a wed­ding suit: you can go for the bespoke option, buy from designer high street stores or just find a smart pair of shoes in Clarks or Bar­ratts. It all comes back to your wed­ding bud­get. How­ever much you have left to spend, here’s a few places to look at wed­ding shoes.

Empo­rio Armani is a great place to start. They have a small range of men’s shoes — but they’re the height of lux­ury and gor­geous to boot. (pun unin­ten­tional but I’m leav­ing it in!) If you have £200 plus change in your wed­ding shoe bud­get, then bag a pair of these.

Samuel-Windsor are an exclu­sive retailer with a range of lux­ury men’s shoes, and def­i­nitely worth a look if your bud­get is around the £100 mark for wed­ding shoes. Their hand­made shoes are made from the finest pre­mium grade leather, mak­ing own­ing a pair a once in a life­time expe­ri­ence — and def­i­nitely per­fect for your wed­ding day.

Bar­ratts have a ded­i­cated sec­tion for men’s wed­ding shoes on their web­site. This is a rare treat, as googling for wed­ding shoes — even with ‘groom’ or ‘men’ in your search query — churns out hun­dreds of white satin sparkly heels, and very lit­tle for guys. So if Bar­ratts suits your bud­get (their shoes are up to about £40) then you can’t go wrong.

Cuf­flinks for your wedding

OK guys, this is all the jew­ellery you get. No tiara, bracelet, ear­rings, neck­lace or bejew­elled hair combs to buy, just the cuf­flinks. Which makes it quicker to get kit­ted out for acces­sories, but not nec­es­sar­ily eas­ier. Where do you start? Unless you reg­u­larly wear cuf­flinks, or have a really spe­cial pair which would be appro­pri­ate for your wed­ding day, you might want to get some for the occa­sion. And you don’t nec­es­sar­ily want the ones Moss have rec­om­mended will go with your suit!

I like these per­son­alised cuf­flinks from Green and Jacks. Lovely qual­ity, per­son­alised and boxed, but with­out being overly fussy, cuf­flinks with your ini­tials are a safe and styl­ish choice.

For a wide choice visit spe­cial­ist cuf­flinks web­site Sim­ply Cuf­flinks and choose from hun­dreds of cuf­flink designs. Avoid the lit­tle nov­elty ones — franken­stein cuf­flinks aren’t quite right for a wed­ding. (Kudos to you if you can get away with the Bat­man ones.)

K J Beck­ett have some really nice cuf­flinks — browse this cuf­flinks col­lec­tion care­fully, as there are a few gems in there: I love the tita­nium cuf­flinks, and the Pan­tone range. The Tyler and Tyler cuf­flinks from K J Beck­ett have some really sophis­ti­cated designs too. Recommended.