Groom / Best Man suits

Myles_W.

Hi,

I've seen various guides for brides to get discount wedding dresses, but I've not seen a similar guide for Groom and Best Man outfits.

Is it ever cheaper to buy a Groom outfit (say from a Chinese company) than to hire for the day? I'm talking about a traditional outfit (waistcoat, tails, etc.) rather than the option of a nice suit.

Faith177

We hired 8 suits and it came to about £700 with Moss Bros.

I think they do a deal where if you have x amount of suits hired the groom gets his free.

faithless

OMG, I've not looked at suits yet, so the above comment with the rental price was a nasty shock!
We have a groom, bm and 3 ushers so would need 5, and we were thinking it would be nice to have the 2 Dads dressed the (avoids me being worried my Dad would turn up in something that fit him and was last in fashion 20 years ago), so that's around £500-£700 by the look of it!

That's ridiculously expensive!
I don't even want tails, a nice grey suit would be fine.
I do like the look of the groom, bm and ushers all wearing the same though. Are there any suit outlet stores? Maybe it would be the same price for me to buy them all a suit, tell them to wear a white shirt, and make my own cravats in matching colours? Then at least they could wear the suit again!

Idiophreak

It's pretty expensive. Most high street places you're looking at £100+ each to hire, normally minus either a percentage (10-15%) or minus the groom's outfit if you hire 4/5 or more.

You can hire them online for around the £60 mark, but you take on additional risks in doing so.

We found a lovely little family run place in a local town that did them for around £85/each after discounts and was very pleased.

I know men don't get much of a look in at weddings, but I was really bummed that no groomswear places made any effort at all to make it seem special, or even to encourage us to spend money with them - even relatively expensive places like Austin Reed didn't really know what was going on with their hire dept. I got quite demoralised with the whole thing for a while, so was glad when we found the nice place

You could probably buy cheap suits for less, but I think you'd struggle to get tails for that money...and you'd risk the suits looking a little cheap. Expensive as they were to hire, our suits were beautiful, well made and fitted perfectly...

Faith177

Moss Bros are notoriously expensive but they suited our purposes.

Basically our ushers are all over the place (London, Bristol, Birmingham & Glasgow). With Moss Bros each person had a branch within 30 mins of them. They were about the only company who we could do this with.

Also we could pick them up from a store near where we were getting married which reduced the amount of hire time and risk of them getting crumpled. We have hired from the Friday - Mon so that has probably bumped it up

lisajane8482

Debenhams do groom goes free if ordering 5 or more suits plus a 10% discount if you pay for them all at once. The suit costs are £92.50 but with the discount it works out at £71.36 per suit.

dorsetlady67

Matalan do Mens tail jackets for £40 & if you buy the proper trousers it's only £55 for the whole suit.

The quality is exellent & looks the same once on as Moss Bross etc.
You can pick up cheap waistcoats on Ebay or in Debenhams/BHS etc Sales.
No point in paying £100+ to hire when for under same price you can buy it then just re-sell on ebay & make a few quid back.

http://www.matalan.co.uk/fcp/product/fashion-to-buy-online/Wedding-&-Prom/Park-Royal-Black-Regular-Fit-Morning-Suit-Jacket/55555&resultsPerPage=100&attrList=Dept,brand

The trousers are much,much better in real life & look/feel like the real deal.
http://www.matalan.co.uk/ProductDetails.ice?ProductID=54780

Lollie79

We used slater menswear, they were really professional nothing was too much trouble. we paid £356 for 5 suits. The quality was excellent and everyone's suit was a perfect fit

mouthscradle

Hi all

Have heard good things about the Matalan morning suits, but looking online they only seem to have the jackets in black. Do they normally stock them in more colours? Would prefer grey really.

Also, might be a stupid question but what's the different between a morning suit and tailcoats?

Thank you

Timpu

Hiya,

By coincidence I was chatting to a colleague the other week on this same question as he got married last summer. He said he went to an independent shop and was able to negotiate with them to get a good deal. He told them 'my budget it £x' and they said 'fine' rather than lose his business. However, he did do this well in advance. Great if everyone is local but otherwise tricky.

HTH.

cats2012

Moss Bros is £60 a suit if you don't need shirt/shoes/waistcoat etc, which is what we've done x