Are Wedding Tuxedo Rentals Worth It? What Brides Really Want

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Are tuxedo rentals still worth it for a wedding and who are the hosts?

Dan DeWard 0:00
Okay, guys, it's time to talk about attire. What are the latest trends? Is it a tuxedo or a suit, a bow tie or a Windsor tie? When do you need to have your order placed? What if you're out of town? How do you correctly get measured? And what if you try your tuxedo on the day before the wedding and it does not fit? Welcome to the Wedding Planning Experts Podcast, hosted by Dan and Andrea DeWard, owners of Full Circle Weddings. After 25 years in the wedding industry, owning and operating multiple wedding venues, hosting hundreds of ceremonies and receptions, we provide tips to help brides and grooms plan their wedding stress-free and on budget. So let's dive in and talk about all things weddings. Okay, Stacey, welcome to the Wedding Planning Experts Podcast.
Dan DeWard 0:45
We are excited today to talk about tuxedos and bunny tuxedo. And I'd like to start off with you sharing a little bit of the background of bunny tuxedo.
Andrea DeWard 0:54
Yeah, well, thank you so much for having me. I never thought that tuxedos would be my passion, but anytime somebody is like, let's talk tuxes, I'm like... Let's go. I love it. I live it and breathe it now. And I never wanted it to be that way. I've been in the family business since I was itty bitty, went to college wanting to get away from it. And the more I learned about real life, the more I realized I loved my job. I loved working with family. I loved it. The close connections of having just a small team. And so I wouldn't ever want to do anything else now. But my grandfather actually started out as a dry cleaner in 1952. And then around 1960, he started carrying tuxes. It was just a nice little thing.
Andrea DeWard 1:39
Partner with, I can clean my own stuff and rent it out and hang it up and then clean it again after it goes out. So dry cleaners were some of the first that did like Tuck's Rentals. He did that along with several other businesses. My grandpa was quite the businessman. A little entrepreneurial. Very, very much so. He was an amazing man. Still is. He's 96 and... Still love talking tuxedos with him. My dad actually bought the business in 83. When he took it from my grandpa, they had like six stores. I think at one point there were like 14 stores. My dad took it, it was like six stores. All bunny, bunny tuxedo stores. Bunny tuxedo locations, owned or rented the locations, hired the staff. And it was just a constant staffing issue for my dad.
Andrea DeWard 2:30
He was constantly going from one store to the other, trying to hire and train and do all the things. And we dabbled in wholesale a little bit, basically offering bunny tuxedos through somebody else's location. A lot of bridal shops did it. A lot of men's stores did it. So, you know, Dan's menswear could now offer tuxedo rentals through bunny tuxedos. I'm having to buy and house them all. Correct. So you got to offer more services. We didn't have to staff your store.

What is the history of Bunny Tuxedos and how did the business evolve?

Andrea DeWard 2:57
My dad saw a huge benefit in that. And so we slowly closed the stores as we weren't able to staff them well. And so he could really focus on the warehouse and doing the things there. So we just have the one main location in Granville that's attached to the warehouse in the back. And then we wholesale all over the state of Michigan to around 50 different stores. And that's always changing as the business climate changes.
Dan DeWard 3:22
And when we had our venues, you know, we had our three venues in West Michigan, we worked with you.
Andrea DeWard 3:28
Well, even before that, you started out with just an all-encompassing wedding business and tuxedos were a part of that.
Dan DeWard 3:35
We loved working with you through that. Yeah, you're right. You're bringing me back. Yeah, you're right. Before the venues, yeah, when we did kind of the full service option in the mobile world, we were doing tuxes. So we worked with your family.
Yeah.
Dan DeWard 3:45
you know, your dad, your mom, and you for many years. Yeah, it's going back to the early 2000s when we had our, when we had a storefront with our mobile services in it at that time. Can you tell us, like right now, what are some of the current trends and styles with tuxedos? I remember when we were starting, we were doing it in the early 2000s, I remember it being primarily black tuxedos.

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