Family Wedding Attire

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Guests are presumed to be adults who are capable and free to dress themselves. Whether they are guests of honor or hosts that includes parents. No, the fathers do not have to match.

On another note, there seems to be a run on this topic lately.

View Quoted Comment Thank you, yea I have noticed it to be a common question. My biggest thing is I want some of the primary people to all look cohesive. I was specifically curious about my dad since he is walking me it gives him a larger role in my mind. I guess my struggle is knowing what kind of formality I should recommend for them all.

Honestly the formality of attire is more determined by the style and formality of the venue. Like you can't ask people to wear tuxes for a backyard picnic. However, you can't really determine what your guests wear in terms of colour. The only exception to this would be specifically "black tie", which is a whole category of hosting requirements.

If your Dad asks you what he should wear, you could be free to suggest, and in this case I would say a grey suit. The Dads don't need to match, but a grey suit is very neutral.

Parents should be dressing themselves because they are adult guests. It’s not appropriate to tell anyone outside of bridesmaids or groomsmen what to wear, as far as colors, because that turns them into photo props. The formality applies to everyone and is determined by a number of factors.

Our dads just wore a suit of their preference, and I told them our colors so they could wear a matching tie if they liked. (They did — Dad wore a tie in one color, and FIL in the other.)


While you can’t dictate what anyone but the wedding party wears, I’ve found that parents and other close guests often ask. In that case, there’s nothing at all wrong with suggesting certain things. You just can’t demand that they do it. My mom ended up finding a dress she loved in my colors and went with that. My brother was an usher so he matched, but my SIL wore totally different colors.

Kayleen,
Having the same problem over here! I think it depends on the color green of the groom and groomsmen suits. If it it the solid hunter green, I think your dad wearing that or a tan tux would fit nicely with the spring wedding. If it is more of a dark green with possible black accents then a black tux would fit nice. Or you could have him wear the same color with something differentiating him such as tie, bow tie, his button up, handkerchief etc.
I hope this helps! If your mom, or step mom I think him being in green and her in a gold / champagne would look nice!

My father and father-in-law specifically asked me what color they should wear and when I said that I had no preference, they came to the conclusion themselves that they would match the groomsmen (charcoal suits, white shirts)

Although adult guests can dress themselves, sometimes they don't want to match (especially MOB/MOG) and it's okay to facilitate colors at their request.

I would suggest letting the dads wear gray/tan/brown suits and you could get them floral ties. For the moms, a floral print (literally ANY floral dress) or super grayish dusty blue would be cute

I gifted my dad a tie to wear for the ceremony. He's a simple guy, I know he had his one black suit that he would wear so I gave him a nice tie to wear to make sure he didn't show up with Donald Duck or something crazy on his tie.

So my other halfs and I, we had a clothing rule, like mother of the bride, wore bride’s favorite color in any shade, groom’s mom wore groom’s favorite color. It worked out great for photos. The dad’s wore colors to accent their wives.