White and Ivory in Perfect Catastrophe

Like the hilarious Miss Biscuit, what the men wore was of little consequence to me. Mr. Hyena wanted to wear a tuxedo to the wedding, and I agreed that sounded like a good idea (he looks real gooood in a tux). :) So I put him in charge of what he, the dads and the dudes were going to wear.

This is the look we were going for. I'm not sure if this is actually what Mr. Hyena picked, because I have little to no knowledge on dude-wear, but it looks close to me.

image via Men's Wearhouse

With a vest and Euro tie (the patterned one) in this color:

image via Men's Wearhouse

Now, we had planned to just go with a white shirt for under the vest and jacket, and we told our Men's Wearhouse consultant this. The consultant asked if my dress was white or ivory, and when I said ivory, he told us we should go with an ivory shirt instead because if we went with white, my dress would look dingy beside the groom.

Uh huh...

Left and right shirts, via Men's Wearhouse

I'm calling B.S. on this one. Yes, for the all of four inches you can see of his shirt under his jacket and vest and tie, I'm sure those minute inches of white fabric are going to making me look dingy.

Luckily, my dress came with this fabric shawl-thingiemabobber that I wasn't going to use for anything, so I brought it with me down to the store. I held it up to the white shirt — HA, my dress is white! I held it up to the ivory shirt — HA, my dress is ivory! Either one would look fine. You seriously could not tell the color difference next to my (gigantic) fabric swatch.

I get that they want to make sure the groom looks as good as possible on his wedding day. That's their job, but I think it's terrible to tell a bride she's going to look dingy in the dress that she likely obsessed over for months, spent hundreds (if not thousands) of dollars on, and that she was so excited to wear for her friends and family and new husband. Isn't there a nicer way to convince a bride that an ivory shirt is a better choice for an ivory dress? "An ivory shirt will complement your dress better than a white shirt," perhaps?

Did you have to deal with the white vs. ivory issue?