What to Wear to a Black-Tie Wedding

Black tie, at its simplest, means a dark suit (or, traditionally, a dinner jacket), a white shirt, and a black bow tie. For men, this is the clearest dress code there is; the difficulty is only in getting the details right.

A proper black-tie outfit is a dinner jacket — single- or double-breasted, in black or midnight blue — with satin or grosgrain lapels, matching trousers with a silk stripe, a crisp white shirt, and a black bow tie (tied, never clipped, if you can manage it). Black dress shoes, polished.

For women, black tie means a floor-length gown, or an elegant cocktail dress that errs toward formal. The Canadian and American interpretation is more forgiving than the British; a sophisticated midi-length dress is widely accepted, particularly for weddings.

What not to wear: anything you have to fuss with. A black-tie event is not the moment for an experimental hemline or a statement you'll regret in photographs.

The deeper point of a dress code is to remove anxiety, not create it. When everyone is dressed to the same standard, no one stands out for the wrong reasons, and attention can turn to the occasion itself.