As you’d imagine, we get a lot of people coming to us looking for their perfect custom wedding suit or tuxedo. A young couple by the names of Christian & Raven, came to us looking for just that. Christian (the groom-to-be) and Raven (the bride-to-be) are two cool & spunky young individuals who visited us in Los Angeles to find Christian the perfect custom wedding suit after they heard about us through RuPaul.
Christian expressed, “I knew I wanted to do a custom suit [for my wedding]. I have a flashy streak for most fashion and I was like I can’t do a boring regular suit for my wedding. [Once I came into the store] we started talking about fun fabrics and [the stylist] showed us samples around the shop and before I knew it we were drinking champagne and going over fabric swatches and narrowing it down and all of a sudden it went from, 'I’m getting a feel for this' to ‘oh they really get my vision for this suit’. They would give me suggestions and pushback where I needed pushback and were really working with me - not just telling me what to do or letting me run over the process, but actually making it a collaborative, fun process.”
A few months later, Christian brought Raven to KEP to see him try on his finalized custom suit. This being Raven’s first time at KEP, she thought “it was such a cool shop, all of the people were cool and as soon as I walked in I was like ‘when can I come in and get a custom suit made?’"
Little did Raven realize, that time would come sooner than she thought…
Everyone knows that if a man is going to look this stunning at his wedding, the woman has some competition in order to look the best - after all, the wedding is all about the bride. Raven shared with us, “I decided I wanted a whole trying on the dress experience. I was trying on dresses and it was fun…but it didn’t feel very me. But I had a good time playing dress up and I tried on a dress…and I walked out and everyone looked at me like ‘this is the dress!’”
That day, Raven ordered the dress, but a few months later, she received a disappointing email stating that her dress order was canceled due to the unforeseen conflict in Ukraine. Of course she was devastated, but she had a short timeline and obviously needed to look stunning, so what did she do?
Raven reflected and stated, “I had played with the idea of a wedding suit in the early stages of wedding planning, but quickly eliminated it because I liked the idea of a white dress & the tradition of it, but once the traditional dress was ruled out in my mind, I was like ‘this opens up other options and I feel like I kind of want to do a custom suit.’ If I’m going to do something different, I want to do something entirely different…what if I also got a Klein Epstein Parker suit, but didn’t tell Christian?”
So Raven did what any cool strong woman would do; she created her new vision, snooped through Christian’s phone *respectfully of course* to find Christian’s KEP stylist, wrote down his number, and texted him to get her vision of a wedding suit for herself started.
“When I went in to get my suit fitted, I felt so f*cking cool. It felt so much better, so much more right for me. I’ve always been a fashionista and super into menswear and this felt like a culmination of who I am by getting a custom suit for myself. It felt so much more right than trying on dresses the traditional way…it was a creative collaboration with other people…and the vision slowly came together and it was really cool. [Dress fitting] felt performative to me…it felt like ‘here’s all of these dresses that are fashionable for the season, which one looks best on you?’ I am kind of an individualist to a fault and so getting a custom suit made was way cooler of an experience for someone [like me] who wants to be different at all costs”, Raven shared.
Raven wore a sari for the ceremony and then she switched into her white colored custom suit for her second “first look” before the reception.
Keep in mind, up until this moment, Christian still thought that Raven was about to walk out for the second 'first look' in a traditional white wedding dress! Raven walked outside in her beautiful and shockingly new KEP suit and Christian exclaimed, “I could literally hear cheers [from guests] as she was about to walk outside and when I saw her, I was floored. It fit Raven’s vibe so well.”
At first Christian didn’t realize that Raven had also bought a KEP custom suit until she opened her jacket to showcase the personal embroidery on the inside that featured the matching song lyrics on Christian’s jacket.
“Once she showed me it was the same song lyric and we got it from the same place, I was so overcome by emotion and that’s where a little bit of tears were shed…It was just such a surprise”, Christian explained.
Raven responded, “It was for us. The look of surprise [on Christian’s face] was so worth it…It was so gratifying, it was the best. It was truly meant to be and the fact that we got to share the experience and the surprise, was super fitting. When life gives you lemons, make lemon meringue pie.”
Click here to learn more about our custom suit process with our professional stylists.
All photos courtesy of Jess Onesto: cheersbabephoto