By the time I saw the clip, it had already made its way around three different family WhatsApp groups I happen to be in. Ranveer Singh and Arjun Kapoor, on the dance floor at Anshula Kapoor's wedding reception in Mumbai this July, recreating Tune Maari Entriyaan like it was still 2014. Nobody in that video was looking at the flowers, the food counters, or even, for those thirty seconds, the bride. Every phone in the room was pointed at Ranveer, dressed head to toe in black.
That is the part I keep coming back to as a stylist. He was not the groom. He was not family, technically. He was a guest at someone else's wedding, and he still managed to become the single most talked about menswear moment of the whole event. I get some version of this question at least once a month, usually from a groom's brother or a bride's closest friend who has just been told he is "getting a proper outfit" for the wedding: how do you dress well as a guest without looking like you are trying to upstage the couple. Ranveer's look that night is close to a perfect answer.
The Aesthetic: Restraint That Still Reads as an Entrance
Strip away the dancing and the nostalgia, and what was left was genuinely simple. A black, bandhgala-style sherwani jacket, structured through the shoulder, closed with a straight column of buttons up to a high collar, worn over a flowing black kurta and matching bottoms in the same deep shade. No embroidery competing for attention, no second colour breaking up the line, just tinted sunglasses as the one flourish, worn indoors at night, because some things about Bollywood dressing are simply not negotiable. On paper it should have read as safe. On the dance floor it read as the most deliberate outfit in the room.
That is the part people get backwards about monochrome. They treat it as the absence of a decision, the thing you reach for when you cannot decide what else to do. It is the opposite. A single unbroken colour from collar to hem elongates the body, sharpens whatever silhouette the tailor built into the jacket, and gives a heavily embellished wedding room a moment of visual quiet, one that makes every eye in the frame land exactly where you want it: on the cut, not the print.
The Stylist's Touch: Why the Guest's Job Is to Frame the Story, Not Compete With It
This is where I get strict with my own clients. The bride and groom are allowed, expected even, to carry the zardozi, the gota patti, the layered dupatta, the colour that needs its own paragraph to describe. Everyone standing near them, whether that is a best man, a bride's sister, or a close friend who happens to be a movie star, has a different job: make the couple's story look even better without ever pulling focus from it in the wrong way. Ranveer's outfit did not compete with a single element of the bride's ensemble that night. It still won the room, because tailoring and colour discipline photograph in a way that embellishment alone cannot fake.
I look at three things when I build a look like this for a client. First, the collar. A bandhgala's structured, closed collar does more for a man's posture and shoulder line than most grooms and groomsmen realize, which is why I recommend it well beyond the main wedding day itself. Second, the transition at the waist. A kurta and trouser cut from the same fabric and tone, with no visible break where one meets the other, is what makes an outfit look considered rather than assembled from three separate purchases. Third, restraint in accessories. One graphic choice, a pair of sunglasses, a signature ring, a well-chosen watch, is enough. Add a second and you stop accessorising the outfit and start competing with it.
The Vibe: Building This Into a Real Wedding Wardrobe
I am already using this reference with the groomsmen and close family I am dressing for the season ahead. When I coordinate five or six men for a Sangeet or a reception, I almost never put all of them in the exact same colour anymore, it starts to read like a uniform rather than a wedding party. What I do instead is keep everyone within one tonal family, black, or a deep bottle green, or ivory, and vary the texture underneath it: a raw silk bandhgala next to a matte cotton kurta set next to something with the faintest self-textured weave. Each man still reads as himself. The group still photographs as one considered decision instead of six unrelated ones.
It also matters more right now than it did even a year ago. As the wedding season starts building again after the monsoon lull, I am styling more multi-function weddings than ever, which means more guests who are also attending three or four other weddings the same month. A monochrome, well-tailored sherwani or bandhgala is, frankly, the most efficient wardrobe decision a wedding guest can make this year. One exceptional cut, worn with total confidence, does more work across a season than five different printed options ever will.
A few things I would tell anyone building a guest or groomsman wardrobe this season:
Choose one uncontested colour and let the tailoring, not the embellishment, do the talking
A structured bandhgala collar improves your silhouette more than any amount of embroidery will
Keep the kurta and bottom in the same fabric and tone so there is no visible break at the waist
Save your loudest colour and heaviest handwork for the couple, your job is to frame their story, not narrate your own
Pick one graphic accessory, sunglasses, a ring, a watch, and stop there
If you are coordinating a wedding party, vary texture within one tonal family instead of matching everyone in the same shade
This is the whole philosophy I bring to anyone who is not the bride or groom but still wants to look like they belong in the frame. You are still telling a story that night, just not the headline one, and a confidently monochrome, properly tailored outfit will always read as more considered than anything that is trying too hard to be noticed. Whether you are the best man, the bride's sister, or the friend who ends up on the dance floor at eleven at night, I want to help you find that same quiet authority Ranveer walked in with.
If you are building a wardrobe for a wedding this season, whether you are the one getting married or the one standing beside them, I would love to sit down and start that conversation.
With love and style,
Shreya Gupta Kedia
Founder, SGK Styles
