Christian weddings in India, whether Catholic, Protestant, Syrian Christian, Church of South India or Anglo-Indian, run on Western formal dress. For the groom that means a suit, and the only real questions are which one, in what colour, at what level of formality, and made how. The answers come from the time of day, the church, how formal the family runs, and what you want to look like standing at the front of it. We've made suits for every variety of Christian ceremony in and around Chennai, and we'll tell you what fits yours.
Morning coat, lounge suit, and the ground in between
The most formal thing a groom can wear in the Western tradition is the morning coat: cut long at the back and away at the front, worn with striped trousers, a waistcoat and a cravat. It still gets requested for very traditional weddings in Chennai's Anglo-Indian and Syrian Christian families, and we make them to order. It's a commitment, and it looks superb when the wedding is formal enough to carry it.
For most Chennai church weddings the lounge suit, meaning an ordinary two-piece or three-piece, is the right call. Ivory or cream for a morning service, navy or charcoal for afternoon and evening, a lighter grey for a garden ceremony. The three-piece with a matching waistcoat adds formality and photographs particularly well, partly because the waistcoat keeps the look complete when the jacket comes off later in the evening.
Cut and colour that hold up in the album
The cut matters as much as the cloth. A defined waist, a clean shoulder and a trouser that breaks properly will read as formal in every photograph taken that day. A suit that doesn't fit reads as careless no matter what it cost or which mill the cloth came from. That's the whole argument for having it made: the suit follows your body instead of a size chart's idea of it.
On colour: ivory and cream for a morning ceremony, pale grey for gardens and outdoors, navy for afternoon and evening in church, charcoal for a formal evening reception. Avoid black in daylight, which reads funeral rather than wedding, and avoid anything bright enough to pull the eye off the bride in the photographs.