How to Pin a Boutonnière and How to Wear One
Boutonnière Placement: Which Side it Goes On and the Right and Only Way to Wear One
Take a look at your suit jacket. On the jacket's left side — your right if you're looking straight at it — you'll see a sewn buttonhole at the top of the lapel. It's called a lapel hole. That's where the boutonnière goes. NOT in the middle of the lapel. Below is a video from Gentleman's Gazette, it's boring as fuck, but the homie will show you THE proper way to pin and wear a boutonnière.
More importantly: if you're going to wear a boutonnière at your wedding, keep it simple. A boutonnière is a color accent, a single flower is more than enough. So there is no logical reason the boutonnière should be the size of a bouquet. Meaning, anything more than one flower looks goofy! But don't overthink it — get this one from Amazon, pin it on your jacket the night before, and you're good to go.
Luxury Wedding Vendors Don't Know How Put on a Boutonnière
It's fucking wild that we still have 99.9% of "luxury" wedding vendors knowing jack shit about where on the suit jacket the boutonnière is supposed to be pinned. Prime example: a couple years ago at my client's wedding — Emma Roberts cousin, of all people — I found myself in a pissing match in front of the client with both the videographers and the wedding planner over the proper placement of the boutonnière.
They pinned the boutonnière dead center on the lapel of our client's jacket — a common mistake. So I fixed it. Took it off and pinned it exactly where it belongs: on the lapel/boutonnière hole. It's literally in the fucking name. Seconds later, the videographer rushed over, insisting it be put back because, to her, it looked weird. The groom was confident I made the right call, but after the videographer dragged the wedding planner into it, he reluctantly moved it back. As you can imagine, the tension between me, the video team, and the planner for the rest of the night was so THICC, you could have used a machete to cut through it.
Where to Place the Boutonnière Matters
It was made clear to me then that while most wedding vendors, even at the luxury level, whip out a twelve inch ruler to measure the distance between the damn napkins and chairs, don't give two shits how YOU look on your own wedding day, because they don't understand basic menswear fundamentals — even something as simple as proper boutonnière placement. My advice: do not blindly trust any one vendor with how you look on your own wedding, because these people prioritize speed, habit, and what they think looks normal over what is objectively correct, and will simply bulldoze through the day checking off boxes on the planner's holy, set-in-stone timeline.
Don't get caught with your pants down.
You have to advocate for yourself or have someone in your corner who will. That includes things as basic as where to place the boutonnière, which has an objectively correct answer. Tradition and construction exist for a reason. Anyway, I'll leave some extra homework videos below to dive further into other things you might find useful when it comes to wearing a suit properly on your wedding day. Don't forget: shoes, belt, and watch strap should always match in color, but not the tie and pocket square. And always tuck in your shoelaces.
A simple guide for planning a civil ceremony wedding in Beverly Hills.