Coordinating Outfits for Vacations
When Brendan and I first started dating, we pretty quickly realized we both liked to travel. We didn’t wait too long before beginning to plan our first trip together. Obviously I’m big into photography and he’s always been so willing and happy to take photos with me that we’ve ended up with a ton of amazing pictures together throughout our travels. It wasn’t long into our relationship when I started coordinating outfits for our trips so that our photos looked even better. This may sound a little bit much to some people and I totally get that, but I enjoy it and so does Brendan (it essentially means that I take all the guess work out of his packing list).
I’ve done this two ways. For big trips I usually have somewhat of an itinerary for each day. I don’t like to pre-plan the entire day, but I do like to have a general idea of at least one thing we have planned for that day or even the area we’ll be exploring. With that in mind, I start planning my own outfits—there’s the practical piece where I check the weather, figure out what might be appropriate in terms of the type of activity etc and then there’s the fun part where you start to get into specifics. For example, in Seville, I knew I wanted to go see the Plaza de España (read more about our trip to Seville here). It was the end of summer and the weather was hot so I knew I’d be wearing a dress, we were doing a lot of walking so comfortable sandals were also a must. Then comes the fun part! Seville is gorgeous and covered in beautiful, ceramic tiles, in the Plaza de España, the tiles are predominantly blue and white with pops of yellow. I thought it would be fun to wear blue and white as well, so I found the perfect dress to complement the surroundings. Once I knew what I was wearing, I started working on Brendan’s outfit. For photos I always prefer coordinating, not matching. I picked out navy chinos and a salmon colored, short sleeve button up to make him pop a little bit, both from the tiles and from my outfit. Once I had our outfits planned, I put them on our itinerary with the rest of the information we needed for that day! I did this for each day. Like I said, I don’t do this for every trip, but when I have, it actually made getting ready for each day of our trip very easy because I’d already pre-planned what we’d be wearing. The less intense way I usually go about doing this is to make my packing list and lay out all of my own outfits. Then go through Brendan’s closets and pick coordinating outfits that could go with my own. I may pick a few key outfits for specific events like a fancy dinner, but I may not have each outfit planned to each day like I did for our Spain trip.
A couple of tips to help you coordinate, but not get matchy-matchy:
Start with your outfit (let’s be honest, you care more than he does)
Match in terms of dressiness/casualness as well as temperature (if you’re in a dress and sandals, he shouldn’t be in a big wool coat)
Choose a color theme - bright, neutrals, muted, dark etc.
Try to avoid being in the same color on top (if your dress or shirt is blue, he can be in blue pants, but not a blue top)
Add in a pattern or texture on at least one of the people (this part maybe doesn’t have as much to do with how to coordinate, as much as I think it just adds interest)
All these tips work for planning holiday photos as well! These are all things I consider for our holiday cards. Now that I’m coordinating with both Brendan and Levi, we’ll see how much longer this takes me when we start to travel with him!
