There are a great many things in this world about which I know nothing, in many cases, less than nothing. But, perhaps there is no single thing that my education, training and experience has taught me less about than the subject of proper wedding attire. Since this is the week that Pam and I are charged with buying our wedding outfits, I thought I would bring this up.
The problem is that people don’t get dressed up anymore. When I was a boy, for example...men wore suits. Everywhere. All the time. Catch any episode of Leave It To Beaver and you’ll find old Ward sitting in his recliner reading his evening paper...still wearing his suit. I mean, the dude has worked eight hours, come home, had dinner, listened to Beaver’s latest travails for half and hour, and now he finally gets a minute to read his paper and he’s still wearing the suit he put on 14 hours ago! Occasionally, he would let his freak flag fly by taking off his jacket and replacing it with a sweater, but never once would he dare remove his tie. Church? No man in his right mind would show up at the Lord’s house without a suit. There was even a term for this dress code...your Sunday Best. Now, the only time you see suits on guys is when somebody dies, or at a downtown law office...which is kind of the same thing.
Now, I don’t think this is entirely a bad thing. I’ve never been comfortable in suits. I have a half dozen of them in my closet in various stages of fashionable-ness. But the problem with the decline of the dress suit is when it’s time to dress up for something like a wedding. What’s appropriate? What would be considered too dressy? You don’t want to show up looking like a pallbearer, or worse, a lawyer!
Of course, picking out a suit for the father of the groom is child’s play compared to the land mine-strewn landscape of mother of the groom dresses. I mean that decision has more psychological undertones, emotional moving parts and status trap doors than Donald Trump’s Twitter feed. So, I don’t envy my wife this week. I just need to make the proper choice. Something casually dressy.
Here’s what I’m thinking...
I’ve always had a secret desire to buy a seer sucker suit. It’s cool, southern, and makes a statement...I know I’m supposed to be dressed up for this event, but in my heart I’d rather be in jeans and a t-shirt, so here I am following the letter of the law but being quietly defiant. Admit it, when you’re attending a serious event, which guy do you think is most likely carrying a flask? The guy in the seer sucker suit, that’s who! The thing that has always held me back from going full seer sucker is the fact that in my mind these are old guy suits...even this absurdly handsome model has gray hair! But, now that I’m 60, that hurdle has been jumped, so maybe it’s time. Of course, this seer sucker thing only works if it doesn’t conflict with the official palette of colors assigned to the Dunnevant-Upchurch wedding, or so I am told. Ultimately I will buy only the suit that meets with the approval of my wife, and I am grateful, not resentful of this fact. Having the expert input of Pam Dunnevant assures me that when I show up at the event nobody will be whispering, What the heck was he thinking??
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