What do I need to be a knight templar?

[Capt. William Drake]

Hello my fellow rennies;
     My lovely wife and I want to go to our next ren faire as a knight Templar and his lady love.  What I need help with is what does one need to pull off the look of a Templar knight?  Our vision of what we are looking for is a knight and his lady casually walking through the faire village.  I really don't want to wear armor due to the heat, so other than that what garb will I need to buy in order to pull this look off?  Thanks for any help and suggestions that you can provide.

[Lady L]

A surcoat, tunic, chainmail, belt, pants, shirt and boots. Chainmail is heavy, but I don't know of anything else that looks the same. I sewed the surcoat, shirt and tunic for Sir R. I don't sew leather, so we bought belt and boots. We also bought the chainmail coif. I made a padded coif for him to wear under it, but he didn't like wearing that. This not a Templar knight, but something similar.

[Rowan MacD]

 I'm pretty sure the Knights Templar 'uniform'  had a white tabard emblazoned with a red cross.  Just substitute that for the blue one in Lady L's picture.

[Lady L]

Yes, Rowen is correct, they had a white surcoat with a large red cross.
We have communicated via forum messages, I think we got it straightened out. Any further questions, I will try to answer, too.

[isabelladangelo]

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:KnightsTemplarPlayingChess1283.jpg#mediaviewer/File:KnightsTemplarPlayingChess1283.jpg

Since you don't want to wear a suit of armor - which they really didn't have at that point, that was more a 14th C thing- it's doubtful you want to wear heavy (and expensive) chainmail either.  Check out the image in the link above.  The gentleman are wearing blue tunics (probably in honor of the Virgin Mary), a cowl that is down about their shoulders, and white capes with the red cross upon it.  None of this is very complicated to make if you'd like to go that route.  You do want the tunic to be out of a fine wool (tropical weight wool is not heavy nor is it hot), the cowl to be the same, and the cape can also be out of a lightweight white wool but the cross probably should be silk.