Tenues de kilt

A full Highland outfit runs to eight or nine pieces. The kilt, a jacket and waistcoat, a dress shirt, a sporran with chain, a kilt belt and buckle, kilt hose with flashes, ghillie brogues, and a kilt pin. A fly plaid and brooch get added for formal evening wear. Building it piece by piece instead? Start with the kilt and a sporran, then add ghillie brogues and hose.

Prince Charlie for evening formality, Argyll for daytime and flexibility. The Prince Charlie is short, cut away at the front, worn with a bow tie and a three button waistcoat, and it is the black tie equivalent. The Argyll has a longer body and works open or with a tie, so one jacket covers the ceremony and a looser reception. Daytime grooms usually take the Argyll. Both are in kilt jackets and vests.

Yes, and it is a common way to mark him out. The usual approach is the groom in his own family sett with the party in one neutral tartan, often a grey or black based sett, or the reverse where the family tartan is quiet enough to carry across a group. Nobody will object either way. What does look unplanned is four different clan tartans scattered through one wedding party.

White shirt, almost always. It keeps the tartan as the only pattern in the outfit and photographs cleanly, which matters more than it sounds on the day. For the waistcoat, pull a single colour out of the sett rather than trying to match the whole thing, or take black for evening and a muted stone or grey for daytime. Add a tartan tie or cravat only when the waistcoat is plain.

Send him three numbers. Kilt waist taken at the navel over a shirt, hip at the widest point, and length from that waist point down to the middle of the kneecap. Jacket sizing needs chest and sleeve on top of that. Anyone with a tailor's tape and a second pair of hands can take these in five minutes. Have the whole party measured the same way rather than reading off trouser sizes, because a trouser waist and a kilt waist are not the same number.

Order together where you can. Tartan is woven in batches and there can be very slight shade variation between one run and another. Invisible on a single kilt, occasionally visible when two stand shoulder to shoulder in a photograph. One order means one batch. If members of the party genuinely have to order separately, place them close together and note on each order that they belong to the same wedding.

Yes, and this is the most common reason people commission a new sett. Design it free in the tartan designer, we register it with The Scottish Register of Tartans, then weave and tailor every piece from one batch. Allow six to twelve weeks from first design to finished garments, so start early.

Send each person the measuring guide and have them all use the same method rather than reading off trouser sizes. Collect waist, hip and length for kilts, plus chest and sleeve for jackets. One shared method across the group matters more than any individual measurement being perfect.

Buy if you will wear it more than twice, which most grooms do once they own one. Hire suits a guest attending a single event with no expectation of another. For a wedding party, buying often costs less per head than repeated hire across several future weddings, and the fit is yours rather than approximate.

Mixed metal finishes across the group, mismatched hose colour, and jackets from different registers. Agree one metal finish, one hose colour and one jacket type across everyone before anybody orders. Those three decisions are what make a party look coordinated in photographs, far more than the tartan does.