Choosing Unique Wedding Shoes

This post is written by Pete. For all his posts, check out this link.

When ya wanna keep it fresh, whether you're at a wedding, at your wedding, just going out for a casual dinner, going to the grocery store, getting the mail, driving to the bank, or just walking around inside your apartment, ya gotta have nice footwear to round out an outfit. Case in point: your wedding suit.

When renting a tux, your options are pretty limited. The only real control I felt I had over how I looked was the shoes I chose. I can't speak for other guys, but the shoe choices I was given by Men's Warehouse made me laugh to keep from crying. But alas! I saw an opportunity, a chance to do something that was unique. I mean ... I could actually have a chance to have some say in our wedding?

Photo credit: Derick & Christy Photography

Shoes boys, it's all about the shoes. While the ladies make 99.999% of the decisions regarding how your wedding will look, where it will be, how it will smell, feel, etc., part of that .0001% of the input we get is what kind of wedding shoes we can wear. As far as colors go, I didn't want to go for the black tux penguin look. Lisa and I were married in a coastal area, so I really wanted a suit with some color. Luckily Men's Warehouse had something right up my alley -- light grey and lilac. Smooth. Now for the shoes.

I could have chosen the plain, boring, blindingly-shiny gaudy shoes that were optional with the tux rental, but I had a better idea: design my own. I was going to do skate shoes, but the ones I'm partial to are way too thick and fluffy. I eventually narrowed it down to two choices: Vans and Converse. Both go with anything. The versatility is unparalleled -- casual, with shorts, at the beach, socks, no socks, jeans and a t-shirt, right on up to a tuxedo. The question now was: Which brand had the colors I was looking for?

The answer to that question, at least for me, was Converse. On the website, you can design and customize your own sneaks in an almost infinite number of ways -- from the color of the eyelets to the color of each side of your sneaker to the color of the thin stripe that runs around the outside of the sole. Using Converse's design platform I was able to create a pair of hi-top Chuck Taylors that highlighted and matched the colors of my suit perfectly. I even had the word "Hubby" stitched into the canvas on the heel. Brownie points!

Lisa's addition: We actually got matching Converse. I wore mine during our reception. It was a lot easier to dance in sneakers than heels. To match with Pete, I had the word "Wifey" stitched on the back of mine.

BRIDAL BABBLE: What type of unique wedding shoes would you choose?