What the groom's party wears

Coordinated with the groom, and deliberately one step below him.

That second part is the whole page, and it is the thing almost nobody plans for.

The mistake: everyone dressed equally well

Groomsmen, brothers and fathers now dress up. That is a genuine change over the last ten or fifteen years and it is not going back.

The problem it creates: if the party is dressed to the same level as the groom, the groom disappears into his own wedding party. In the photographs there is no focal point, and someone looking at that picture in twenty years has to work out who got married.

The test is the same one we use for the reception: someone walks into the room, scans it, and should instantly know which one is the groom. A party dressed at parity makes that impossible.

How to dress a party properly

One step below, and in a different register.

Lighter embroidery than the groom, or none. If he is heavily worked, they are plain or lightly textured.

A quieter palette — tones that sit around his rather than competing with it.

A different garment where possible. If he is in a sherwani, waistcoat-and-kurta sets or bandhgalas on the party read as a supporting cast rather than a row of near-misses.

Consistent with each other. The party should look like a group. It is the groom who should look like the exception.

Fathers are usually the exception to the exception — a father in a prince coat or a bandhgala reads correctly and nobody mistakes him for a groomsman.

Do it in one visit

The party is the part that gets left late, and it is the part that most benefits from being decided in the room with the groom's outfit physically present. Colour that seems close on a phone screen is either right or badly wrong when the two pieces are held together.

We curate the party against the groom's chosen pieces rather than sending a list of colours. It is the same principle as the bride: we never match, we complement — and the party is complementing the groom the way the groom is complementing her.

Timing, which is the real risk here

Eight to twelve weeks plus fittings for bespoke, and a party multiplies the fittings, not the production time. The practical constraint is getting five or six men in a room twice.

For parties inside that window we work from finished pieces held in Solihull and Mississauga — altered to each man and theirs to keep. For a group, this is very often the right answer even when there is time for bespoke.