Best watches for a wedding

An open-heart dial is formal without being fussy, and on this watch it comes with 100m — so the watch you wear to the wedding is also the watch you can wear to the honeymoon beach.

Sapphire, an 80-hour Tissot automatic with a Nivachron hairspring, and a published US service price. The 21mm lug width is the one annoyance.

The quick-release bracelet is the detail worth paying for: this is one of the few Swiss automatics at this level you can re-strap in thirty seconds without a tool.

The most striking dial on this page, in a 40mm case that wears smaller because the lugs barely project. Under a cuff, it is a talking point rather than a bulk.

50m is the limit for the years after.

42mm lug-to-lug on a 40mm case is remarkable — this is a skeleton watch that actually fits a normal wrist. 50m is the honest limit: an open dial is still a sealed case, but it is not a watch to swim in.

The PRX reads as dressy on its bracelet and as a sports watch the rest of the week, with sapphire, 100m and a published service price behind it.

It will always be a bracelet watch — the integrated fitting takes no standard strap.

Tissot publishes a US complete-service price of $210 for a mechanical two-or-three-hand watch, which makes this the most predictable Swiss automatic here to own. The 12mm lug width is not a strap size — the bracelet is part of the case.

Domed sapphire and applied indices on a dress dial at a level where most dress watches fit mineral.

It is large for a dress watch — 42.5mm and 50.5mm lug-to-lug, 14mm thick. Check the cuff fit first.

Domed sapphire at this price is unusual and it is why this one is here. The 50.5mm lug-to-lug is not — that is a big watch, whatever the 42.5mm on the spec sheet suggests.

The Presage Cocktail Time dial changes with the light in a way that photographs beautifully, and Seiko publishes the $176 4R overhaul that keeps it running.

Hardlex and a 41-hour reserve — if it is worn occasionally, expect to set it each time.

A box-shaped Hardlex crystal, not sapphire — it will pick up scratches under a shirt cuff. Everything else about this watch is built to be kept, and the 4R35 sits on the same $176 service line as the 4R36.

The proportions of a far more expensive dress watch: 38.4mm across, 44mm lug-to-lug, with a domed crystal and applied markers.

30m and mineral glass make it a watch to take off before the shower, every day, for as long as you own it.

A 44mm lug-to-lug is genuinely small by modern standards, and this is the Bambino to buy if the 40.5mm versions never sat right. The domed mineral crystal is the compromise, and it is the one Orient never fixes on this line.