F-Word Friday: Black Tie or Bust?

Liz Lemon (yelling): "Why are you wearing a tuxedo?"

Jack Donaghy: "It’s after six, Lemon. What am I, a farmer?"

The biography that posted last Friday as an introduction to this weekly feature was, well, ridiculous. As are all third-person autobiographies really, despite Facebook’s insistence to the contrary. But the one I wrote was particularly absurd. The details are almost entirely fabricated. But the timeline, and the locations, are all factual. I was born in Philadelphia and raised in a quiet upper-middle class Connecticut suburb. I did go to boarding school, and after a year off I did enroll at and eventually graduate from Yale. All of which is largely irrelevant to a wedding blog, except for one reason: it’s my belief that I’ve spent an inordinate amount of time in, and am really quite fond of, the tuxedo.

Maybe this has nothing to do with my adolescence and education. And one certainly need not go to boarding school or college to spend several nights a year in formalwear. But with the exception of the black-tie charity events of my adulthood in Dallas, nearly all of my nights in a tuxedo came via school, and came often. There were formals, cotillions, and debutante balls in high school (which we all knew was just an excuse for us kids to play dress-up). In college, there were the formal cocktail and Christmas parties in NYC, and nearly all of my best friends from college had black-tie weddings. And I always have a great time. Everyone looks fantastic (aside from the occasional extra from a Growing Up Gotti prom episode). Honestly, I wish I had more occasions to wear one now. I owned my first tuxedo in ninth grade, and have one in my closet now, ready to slip on at a moment’s notice.

But we’re not having a black-tie wedding, and that’s a good thing. The cliché, as we all know, is that the bride plans everything because she’s had her heart set on xyz since she was 5. And that’s true for some weddings, I’m sure. But neither one of us is the kind of person to impose their aesthetic on the other….we’re not that couple. The wedding should be all about who WE are, together. It’s not hers or mine alone. I love the vibe we’re going for, and think we’re going to get it. I love the idea of wearing seersucker, and not as a gimmick but as something I’ve worn before and something that will feel very much like me. Besides, Maggie and I have gone black-tie before, and will again, if only because Maggie looked so utterly devastating in her dress the last time it happened. And, well, because after the wedding the tuxedo is going to be a little jealous....