Weddingbee Blog

Mr. Meerkat has a very short list of must-have items for the wedding. One of things on his list was a really nice suit. What he was thinking was something like this:

ahfashion.com

As usual, I had other ideas in mind. I was thinking something more along the lines of this:

offbeatbride.com

Well, I gave in, and we decided to use light-weight linen suits. This would seem like a pretty standard thing to find in a store, right? Nope. After trying five different major department stores, we ended up at Men’s Warehouse, who oddly enough only had one option, and it was well over $300. It wasn’t even the finest quality linen, either!

So we headed home, and I crawled back to my old friend, Google. After a couple hours of searching, I stumbled on a thread of destination brides talking about how much trouble they also had finding linen suits and how they ordered custom-made suits online from studiosuits.com. After reading through nearly 30 pages of positive reviews with brides raving about how great Studio Suits was, we decided to give it a shot.

Studio Suits had two different options for tan-colored linen suits: a standard-quality linen for $99 and a high-quality Irish linen for $175. To help us decide, we ordered a material swatch card for $15 (including shipping). When it arrived, we were pretty impressed with the quality of both types of material. The Irish linen had a little bit of a tighter weave to it, and Mr. Meerkat decided that was the one he liked best (but we have given the groomsmen the option to choose either one).

These are custom suits, so we were asked to enter 13 different measurements. (Don’t worry; it was really easy. They have pictures to show how to measure everything.) So I measured Mr. Meerkat, and we placed our order. I spent the next three weeks worrying that I had measured wrong or the quality would be poor.

Well, his suit arrived and WOW! The quality was FAN-FREAKIN-TASTIC! Plus, it fit him perfectly. We don’t need to have a single thing altered.

So while I worried and worried, this was absolutely the best purchase we could have made.

Remember my inspiration for groomsmen attire, pictured above? The thing I loved the most about this picture was the groom in his vest and the groomsmen in just suspenders. So when I was ordering Mr. Meerkat’s suit, I might have “accidently” slipped a matching vest into the order:

Minus the fact that Mr. Meerkat looks like he is going out for a night at Chippendale’s in this picture, I love the vest. It just gives it that little extra when he takes his jacket off, which you know is going to happen as soon as he gets to the reception.

To finish off my original inspiration, I found some basic brown suspenders for seven dollars on Amazon for the groomsmen to wear:

Amazon.com

Oh, but wait; we are not done. Mr Meerkat was not thrilled with the idea of boutonnieres, so we have ditched them in favor of pocket squares and matching ties:

solidcolorneckties.com

Each of the groomsmen will be getting a deep pink set to match the bridesmaids dresses, and Mr. Meerkat will be getting this orange set that matches my shoes.

And the pièce de résistance. Remember how I told you I was going to order a bouquet frame with a picture of my dad from Texas Girl Designs on Etsy? Well, it arrived, and Mr. Meerkat fell in love with it:

So we are having one made of his grandmother who passed away. He will be wearing this in place of the boutonniere. The only thing we are missing now is a set of shoes for Mr. Meerkat, and then his outfit will be set!

What accessories will your guys be wearing? Anyone else ditching the boutonniere?