Here's our formal night attire from our 1/18 Magic 8-night out of Galveston.
I think maybe a lot of people on that cruise were first timers and didn't know. We were out & about for an hour or so getting pics and may have seen 1 or 2 other families really dressed up.
The tuxes for the guys were really inexpensive at Al's Formal Wear. We purchased their "cruise package" (not RENTAL) for $119 each. That included coat, pants, shirt, tie, cummerbund, and studs. The lady threw in socks. We bought the boys' shoes at Payless for $30 each and the hubby's we spent more at DSW since we know his feet aren't growing anymore. For the boys, the adjustable waist pants and coat can still be let out in length as needed. We have 2 more cruises with formals this year then another next May. I expect we'll get plenty of wear out of these tuxes. Consider a tux rental for a cruise from Al's would've been $200 each. If we rented from the cruise formal company that delivers the tuxes to the staterooms we'd have been out $300 each this year alone. To us, it was an investment.
We didn't actually make it to our 2nd seating dinner. We got ready super early thinking we'd need that time to get lots of pics before dinner. I guess we hit the photo op spots perfectly because we had all the lifestyles shots PLUS Minnie done in like 45 minutes total. We had another hour and a half until dinner. We were super hot. Very uncomfortable. We NEVER dress up so being in all those clothes was pretty miserable. My left shoe ate a hole in my left leg (above the heel) in the 45 minutes we were out. We were going to just relax in the stateroom for half an hour, try to get a pic with Mickey, then hit dinner. While sitting in the stateroom we put it to the vote: stick it out and go for dinner or ditch the clothes, hit Topsiders, and get on with our evening.
We had a lovely dinner in our tshirts & shorts at Topsiders.
So, yeah, we actually spent about $900 for clothes we wore for less than an hour. But we got some nice pics!
