Weddingbee Blog

So I mentioned briefly that last week was a particularly exciting week, wedding-attire-wise. The highlight was definitely my dress fitting and, yes, I finally managed to take a few pictures, so those will be coming very soon (I promise!). But Mr. Parasol and I also went shopping for a tie to complete his wedding-day look, and then we started looking for a suit for Brother Parasol.

We had originally planned to just go to Macy’s for all of the dudes’ duds, but on the way we saw a Saks Fifth Avenue and thought, “Hey, what the heck. Let’s look there, just for fun.” I have no idea why we thought this would be fun; none of us had ever even been to Saks before. But maybe that was the appeal. In any event, we put on our best behavior and headed into a really fancy schmancy store.

Mr. Parasol browsed their enormous tie selection, and he actually found several that he liked. A few were ridiculously expensive but, surprisingly, some were very affordable. Some of his favorites were actually on sale for cheaper than anything we’d find at Macy’s.

Here are a few that made it into the dressing room:

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As you can see, we were looking mostly at greens and grays. We had originally thought about purple (I know!), but we didn’t see anything that we really liked or that wasn’t too “out there” for us. Once we narrowed down our selection, it was time for Mr. Parasol to start trying them on.

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This tie was an immediate top contender, and it was definitely Brother Parasol’s favorite. We loved all the green and gray, the nice pop of color it added to Mr. Parasol’s ensemble, and the modern design. Mr. Parasol didn’t want to feel like he was wearing one of his dad’s ties, and he loved the striped pattern on this tie.

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We also loved this tie a lot. It looked a little more boring on the shelf, but when Mr. Parasol put it on, it just kind of worked and he felt really good in it. It had a lot of the same elements that he liked in the first tie, but it was a little more subtle. It looks mostly gray in this picture, but in real life there’s actually hints of green and a very light lavender, which look so great.

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This tie got an almost immediate “no” from all of us. We decided that this tie would only work if Mr. Parasol was attending a Mad Men party. While we Parasols certainly love us some Mad Men, he really didn’t want to look like a 1960s ad executive on our wedding day.

Brother Parasol, surprised by how much fun he was having shopping for menswear / Personal photo

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This tie was another favorite. Mr. Parasol loved how it looked on him, and he especially loved how it felt. Seriously, this tie was made of the softest fabric ever. It was an absolute dream. But a tie this awesome definitely comes with a price tag to match: almost $150, which was $115 more than the other two contenders. I asked Mr. Parasol if he liked this tie $115 more than the other ties, and he quickly decided that while he really loved it, he didn’t love it enough to justify spending so much more on it.

Before Mr. Parasol made a decision, he went through all the pictures I’d taken to see what he looked like in each tie. It’s a good thing he did because there was a clear-cut winner for him:

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Yep, Mr. Parasol went with the subtle gray tie. He decided that he didn’t like the part of the green tie that peeked out at the top as much as the rest of the tie. Besides, the gray one felt more like him. He’s a simple guy with simple tastes, and this tie matches him perfectly.

So now that we had Mr. Parasol’s tie, we headed over to Macy’s to look at suits for Brother Parasol. He was a little nervous at first about trying things on, but once we got him started there was no stopping him: he wanted to try on everything in the store! I think he felt like a rock star. Here are some of his favorites.

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We were very much in the “just looking” stage for Brother Parasol that day, so we didn’t buy anything. But he definitely has a much better sense of what kind of suit he wants to get for our wedding, and more than anything he is really exciting about rockin’ some awesome duds!

Did you help find duds for the dudes? How did you decide what they’ll be wearing on your wedding day?