Putting Together Some Disney Duds

I've mentioned it in a few previous posts, but both Girl Scout Fiancée and I have lost quite a bit of weight since our engagement. Just comparing our engagement photo shoot with things like the profile photo I have up now makes it pretty obvious how much we've lost, but as of this writing I've lost 110 lbs. since we got engaged, and Girl Scout Fiancée has lost a proportional amount. Of course, this leaves us with something of a problem every few months: we don't have any clothes that fit us. Since summer ends in Seattle in August, the last time I wore all of my summer clothes was about 50 lbs. ago, and now even the shorts I was wearing just fall down around our ankles. We'll be heading to the heat of Florida in just a little over a week, and so this past weekend the time was right for us to do a major summer clothes shopping expedition, because neither of us wanted to walk around on our honeymoon looking like little kids dressed up in their parents' clothes. 

Like this, only not adorable.

Since we settled on Disney World for our wedding and honeymoon, Girl Scout Fiancée has been following a fashion blog called Disney Bound. The premise of the site is that they put together outfits inspired by characters from Disney movies, using color schemes for those characters paired with more modern fashion. Girl Scout Fiancée has taken the idea and run with it, and in the weeks leading up to our shopping expedition she put together an outfit based on Snow White, along with a couple of variants. We have dinners planned at four pretty nice restaurants at Disney World (Yachtsman Steakhouse, Victoria & Albert's, Jiko, and California Grille), and we're going to want to look nice on the nights that we go to those dinners. So, in addition to shopping for clothes to wear at the resort and around the parks, I decided to follow Girl Scout Fiancée's lead and put together a few outfits of my own. After all, if she's going to look that good, I've got to at least keep pace!

Mickey Mouse

How can you not love the mouse himself as inspiration for an outfit? Back at Halloween, I snagged a pair of red jeans and a black shirt for a Mickey Mouse costume, and my first thought was just to use that. However, it doesn't quite match Mickey's look, especially not how he appears in the parks. I did a little Internet research and found some photos of Mickey in Disney World, and used that as a starting point.

If you're going to dress like a Disney character, why not go for the Big Cheese himself?

At first, I'd planned to wear a white t-shirt under a black blazer, along with the red jeans and my black dress shoes. Despite the fact that a jacket-and-t-shirt-combo can look hip and trendy on Seattle hipsters, I just didn't feel like I was pulling it off (though, I'll admit that part of that is because both my jacket and my t-shirts were far too large for me, and made me look disheveled). During our shopping expedition, I came across a nice white dress shirt, and even found a great-looking black dinner jacket at a secondhand that looked amazing on me (it was the equivalent of a medium, where my existing jacket was an XL). Now the Mickey-inspired outfit involves the red jeans, black dress shoes, a white dress shirt, and the black dinner jacket; I may use the bowtie from my wedding outfit with this, too, depending on how hot it is and if I can stand to have my collar closed. I'm also considering going back to Kohl's on Sunday or Monday to grab one of the black vests they had on clearance; I won't wear the vest with the jacket, but instead replace the jacket with the vest for a different look that uses the bulk of the same clothing items. That gives me something to wear to Yachtsman Steakhouse, and then wear the other version of the outfit to California Grille.

Aladdin.

At one point, Girl Scout Fiancée pointed me toward an awesome outfit that was inspired by Aladdin on DisneyBound. Since Aladdin is my favorite Disney movie, it took no convincing to get me to pursue it. Even better, I already had many of the components for the DisneyBound version of the outfit.

Though I won't be buying a magic lamp.

All I needed was a brown dress shirt and some slacks, both of which were easy to come by and both of which I could wear to work after the honeymoon is over. My brown work shoes are a little scuffed and uneven in color, but a little shoe polish will take care of the scuffs, and may even make it look more like the "street rat" version of Aladdin that the outfit is inpired by. I picked up the shirt and slacks, along with a nice new belt, on our shopping expedition, and I'd planned on using the vest from my wedding outfit as the vest for this one. Then, at the same store where I found my dinner jacket, I also found a vest that I knew I had to grab: it was a deep, royal purple, easily one of the flashiest pieces of formalwear I'd ever seen, and I could only imagine that it was once part of an extremely fabulous suit worn by Jerome from Morris Day and the Time. It's a little big, but I'm going to wait and see how I'm feeling about the whole outfit the day that we go to Jiko before making the call on the navy vest vs. the purple vest. Even better, Girl Scout Fiancée found a blue dress that is almost the same shade as Jasmine's, so she's putting together a Jasmine-inspired outfit to wear that same night.

Victoria & Albert's

Not every outfit I put together for our trip is inspired by a Disney character. Leading up to our shopping trip, I was getting very nervous about what I was going to wear to Victoria & Albert's. On the one hand, the dress code specifically calls out dinner jackets for me, which are not the same as a blazer, or even a simple suit jacket. On the other hand, I'd read a lot of posts by men who had simply worn their business suits, or even just slacks and a blazer, to Victoria & Albert's. Also, we're going to be sitting at the Chef's Table, not out in the main dining room, and I've seen enough reviews to know that it's a much more relaxed environment. Even still, there's something about me (guess I'm Lawful Good after all) that doesn't like breaking the rules, so I felt an insane amount of relief when I found the dinner jacket during our shopping trip. Girl Scout Fiancée showed me the dress that she plans to wear that night (she also wore it out for her bachelorette party), and it mostly black and pink. Since my dinner jacket and pants are black, I found a pink dress shirt at Kohl's and got a nice tie to go with it at Nordstrom Rack, putting together a pretty nice outfit that not only matches what Girl Scout Fiancée is going to wear but also didn't break the bank in the process.

Failed Outfit: Prince Charming.

There was one other outfit that I wanted to put together for the trip, but failed to do so. On the DisneyBound page I found a great looking inspiration for a Prince Charming outfit, which would have looked nice at any of our fancy dinners, or would have been perfect the night we went to Cinerella's Royal Table (though I'd probably want to run back to the Boardwalk to change after a day at the parks, since I wouldn't want to wear it all around the park that day).

This guy is definitely Doing It Right.

Unlike my other outfits that I put together, I'd need to obtain a lot of more expensive items for this one. I planned to start with the same red jeans and white dress shirt that would be a part of my Mickey Mouse-inspired outfit, then add a tan vest, a gold tie, and a gold belt, plus some nice brown dress shoes. Unfortunately, all of the components I needed were expensive. There weren't any tan vests at the secondhand stores, so I would have had to buy new, and none of the places I looked for vests had anything in the right color. My fallback would have been a jacket (though I wasn't thrilled at the idea of doing the jacket with no vest), but jackets are even more expensive. I ended up abandoning this outfit (for now; there's always the anniversary trip next year), and will stick with the three really nice ones I put together already.