So now we have our venue and our church and our date, the real work begins. How on earth do you go about deciding which of the million tasks you have to do is a priority? Even the wedding bible seems to go into spasms just contemplating it!
After many cups of tea, the next thing we decided to tackle was the outfits for our bridal and groom parties. There are 7 people, plus us, who we need to clothe, so it seemed like a mammoth task. Luckily, I had kept the information from the various wedding fayres we had been to, including the huge one at the NEC in Birmingham, so we spent a weekend visiting and ringing up the various places for quotes and to have a look round, starting with the men’s.
I was shocked at how expensive these places were, I know weddings are a big business, but this really was catastrophic to a small-town girl. We tried some of the big names, Peter Posh and Moss Bros to name a couple, who all quoted about 60 quid per suit (including the waistcoat and cravate) with the groom being free. If you’re good at maths, you’ll realise this totals the cost of a holiday to Europe. Rob, not usually a fan of being centre of attention, seemed especially excited, and it dawned on me that for the groom, this is the equivalent of my wedding dress. After choosing from an extraordinary range of suites, styles, cuts and colours, he decided on the Prince Edward suit with a waistcoat to later be decided depending on the colour of the bridesmaid dresses.
After much deliberation, we also decided that we simply could not afford to clothe the groomsmen in hired suits, so they will wear their own black jacket and trousers, and we will hire the waistcoats and cravate’s for them.
I wasn’t expecting choosing a suit would take a good month of our time, but we are happy with the company we chose – a small shop in Shropshire who have a good reputation and extremely flexible about fittings / dates / decisions etc, and Rob is pleased he is sorted.
