He wore shorts?

A friend of mine recently received a wedding invitation with a most peculiar dress code. Shorts. At a wedding. You can understand the looks of confusion.

Apparently the groom had decided, on his wedding day in Fiji he was going to wear shorts and his guests should feel free to follow suit.

Shorts should never be worn at a wedding, especially not by the groom. Shorts are for running, for swimming, for digging holes in and for sitting around the fire drinking beer in. Shorts are not meant for any formal occasion. You don’t wear shorts to the races and your grandmother would definitely give you a disapproving look if you wore shorts out to dinner.

I am yet to see a man look dashing in a pair of shorts, except perhaps if he was from the 1950s on the golf course, with a pair of long socks covering his hairy legs. Today, the only men who can get away with wearing shorts have a fundamental reason to wear them – they’re either a lifeguard or featuring in an ad for VB.

“Nice” shorts do exist but, unless they are of a quality linen, have some form of tailoring and don’t feature too many “cargo” pockets, it is acceptable for men to wear them in public. Just be careful of falling into the shorts trap and thinking they are an acceptable piece of clothing. They aren’t.

There is a time and a place for shorts and it’s clearly not at a wedding. As we all shook our heads with disapproval I thought of all the odd looks people will give as they look at those shorts. Ironically this is a man wearing the pants in the relationship.

No matter how casual the wedding, it’s always best to overdress!