A Very Dapper Wedding: Katie and Ilana

This is our sixth post in dapperQ’s Wedding Week, where we feature dapper weddings and answer all of your burning wedding questions. Today, we are featuring the dapper wedding of Katie and Ilana. Katie shared her experience finding the perfect wedding suit with dapperQ.

*Feature written by Katie Kein. Photos by Robert Kaussner Photography

A few words about my partner, Ilana, and me: Ilana and I live outside DC in Rockville, MD, where she is a social worker in child protective services and I am a Doctoral student in American Studies at George Washington University. We met about 6 years ago when we both worked at Americans United for Separation of Church and State in DC. We got married July 6th this past summer on an Inn/Farm right outside Ithaca, New York. We wrote the ceremony ourselves in order to incorporate our values of community, family, and partnership along with our interpretations/variations of some Jewish wedding traditions, and it was performed by a cousin and a close friend. Beyond that, our top priorities were the booze and the food!

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Leading up to the wedding, what I was going to wear and where I would find it was a pretty big source of anxiety. I knew I wanted a grey suit with a vest for our outdoor wedding, and one that resembled a men’s style suit, but that fit well. (Because I am pretty tall with broad shoulders, men’s suits often fit OK without alterations, but fitting a vest has always been very difficult). While I wear exclusively men’s clothing normally, I was less comfortable shopping in the suit section of a department store where most of the sales people tend to be older men and it can be hard to find someone who understands what you want, let alone why you’re there.

We had searched some blogs and articles to find advice from others who have been in this same position, which led us to a few shops and websites, many of which were out of our price range–we were willing to splurge for our wedding, but were still operating on a relatively tight budget and I was unwilling to spend beyond what seemed reasonable.

We visited an Italian shop in Alexandria, Virginia called Dash’s, which we had found on blogs as being friendly to making men’s suits for women. The man who owns the shop was amazingly accommodating and comfortable, which we appreciated, but I didn’t feel like I was ending up with quite what I was looking for. (But he had some amazing blazers so we’d go back in the future!) It wasn’t until we found My Suit NY online, and had the good luck of being helped by Ian Rios (a My Suit clothier), that I felt like I would end up with something I was excited to wear that day, not just OK with. I had never worked with someone who listened to and understood that well how I wanted it to fit, and it turned out just how I pictured it.

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At My Suit, you get to pick every accent and detail–from lining, piping, and monogram, to the angle of buttonholes and felt under the collar–which is really fun and gives you a finished product that is truly yours. I totally didn’t buy into weird, romanticized notions about what you wear for your wedding (think: “Say Yes to the Dress”), but I ended up with a suit and overall experience that felt really special, which was a surprise!

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My Suit New York Stats
Ian Rios
My Suit NY — Wall St (30 Broad St, NY, NY)
646-556-7430
[email protected]

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1 Comment

  • Ok, spill the beans on the suit details! As many as possible please! Fabric, lapel, vents, etc!

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