Put a wedding party in the Royal Grand Ballroom at the Royal Park Hotel and, from any table, it reads as a row of dark shapes. The couple spent months on the flowers and about four minutes on which man should look like which. There are three ranks in that row, and each one needs a rule.
The groomsmen
Identical, and gratefully so. Same cloth, same tie, same shoes if you can manage it. A groomsman who has been allowed one personal touch is a groomsman who has broken the row, and the row is the entire visual argument for having eight of them.
The best man
One thing, small, and the same category as the groom’s thing. If the groom takes a vest, the best man takes a vest in the party’s color. He is a half-step up, and a half-step is a vest, not a different suit.
The groom
One thing more, and it has to survive being seen from the back of the room: a tie nobody else is wearing, a waistcoat, a cloth a shade deeper than the party’s. What it must not be is a different suit altogether, which from forty feet doesn’t read as rank. It reads as a man who came from another wedding.
Also for Rochester Hills: Two Fathers at Meadow Brook, and What Each One Says. More on wedding suits, or plan your visit to our Oak Park showroom.
