The benefits of a wedding dress shop near you
It can feel a bit daunting when you start looking for a wedding dress. After all, you’ve got the whole wide world of wedding fashion to choose from. That’s a lot of dresses. Some brides even travel the wide world in their hunt for the perfect dress. But rest assured, you don’t need to do so. You will be able to find the right wedding dress for you at a wedding dress shop near you.
On top of which, there are some additional benefits to buying locally. Not least in how they approach their brides. You can imagine that a shop that serves brides local to them has a different outlook than one that is used to brides jetting in from around the world (or driving for hours clear across the country), possibly only for a single visit.
Local wedding dress shops go the extra mile so you don’t have to
One of the main reasons brides travel longer distances to view wedding dresses is that they feel they won’t be able to get the same dresses locally.
But the truth is that, unless you are determined to buy a wedding dress from an ultra-exclusive fashion designer who sells from a single shop in the entire world, you are unlikely to find a dress that suits you better than one you could have bought locally.
The reason is simple. Your local wedding dress shop travels to the same wedding dress trade shows that overseas wedding boutiques do, and selects from the same collections.
For bridal boutiques in Europe, the big viewing and buying event is the Barcelona Bridal Fashion Week. This is held every spring and over 400 fashion brands from all over the world attend to present their latest collections.
Filtering through the thousands of dresses being shown is a big job. But your local bridal shop knows their own market (you) well. They will have a good idea of which designs will appeal to you and be able to bring home a selection already curated to what is likely to appeal to your tastes.
Irish wedding dress designers
A stunning dress by Irish design studio AL Bridal Couture
While we go to Barcelona every year to view dresses, we also keep an eye on the Irish design scene. While we love the international design studios we work with, we also want to support talent in Ireland. That’s the reason we buy from designers here in Ireland as well, eg AL Couture and The Next Chapter.
And if supporting Irish designers and studios appeals to you as well, you’re more likely to find their dresses at your local bridal boutique than in, say, London.
Another thing to bear in mind is that you may need to pay several visits to your wedding dress shop. If you are buying your dress overseas or from a shop distant from where you live nationally, having to travel several times adds to the time and expense involved. And if something isn’t right, getting it sorted out can become a headache. A local bridal shop is going to be in a much better position to help quickly and effectively.
Respect for the occasion
Your wedding day is an incredibly important day in your life. And a bridal boutique in our region to you is going to be very conscious of that. For instance, in our boutique, we genuinely understand the significance of the occasion and the importance of your wedding dress to you.
You’ll sense that from our enthusiasm when you visit us and our approach to selling wedding dresses.
Being enthusiastic about you and your wedding day is vitally important. And keeping that enthusiasm is something we actively work on. One way we do that is by keeping our dress collection fresh and exciting. We love bridal fashion, and we’re always looking to see what the innovative bridal studios are coming out with, so we can share that with you.
In addition to enthusiasm, we are very conscious of how we sell to you. Obviously, we are a business and we earn our living selling wedding dresses. Our livelihood depends on it. But we won’t make a sale at the expense of our brides. In other words, we won’t sell you a dress we don’t think is perfect for you.
In our eyes, we don’t just sell wedding dresses. We sell the right wedding dress to the right bride. Our aim is for you to look and feel fabulous on your wedding day.
So we are very honest with you. If we think a dress is wrong for you, we will say so, and guide towards a dress that will suit you perfectly. We’d rather not make a sale, than send you out the door in something we know is wrong for you.
Low pressure = high satisfaction
The build up to a wedding can put a lot of pressure on brides. We don’t want to add to that. In fact, the opposite: we want to reduce any pressure you might be feeling.
A lot of that pressure is artificially placed on you anyway. For instance, you hear a lot of advice that you need to have your dress bought at least 18 months before your wedding day. That’s nonsense. It’s a pressure technique to get you to buy.
Regardless of when you start looking for a wedding dress, you will be able to buy one. It is true that the closer to your wedding day you begin your search, the more compromises you’ll have to make in your selection, but it’s not true that you won’t be able to find anything.
We always suggest starting your search 10 to 12 months from your wedding day. That gives us plenty of time to work with you to find and fit the perfect dress for you. We have a process that has been proven time and again to successfully guide brides towards a bridal gown they adore.
We like to say, 12 months is plenty of time, 12 weeks is cutting it fine (and will limit your choice), 12 days is an off-the-peg or sale dress. Yet within each of these, you’ll find gorgeous gowns.
Sale dresses not only offer fantastic value, but help brides who have a short run up to their wedding day too. (This one is currently on sale at Say I Do.)
Trust the process, enjoy the ride, delight in the outcome
Our process is a relaxed one. We believe that if a wedding boutique rushes a bride into a purchase, it will inevitably end in stress and tears, literally. We want you to float out of our boutique with your dress, knowing it is perfect for you.
So we look to make the experience smooth and provide a service based on trust. Your trust in us to find you the perfect dress allows the magic to happen. It takes a dress from being just a dress to being a dress for you. That may even mean you fall in love with a dress you hadn’t even considered to begin with, rather than a dress you thought was perfect, but ultimately wasn’t.
That means we are honest in how we interact with you. We genuinely understand the right dress for the right personality, shape and type of wedding day.
It also means we aren’t rigid. You aren’t bound by the strict design of a dress. For example, you might choose a dress that is almost right, but not quite.
Sometimes, all that’s needed to make it your perfect dress is a change of the pattern.
Sometimes, we need to think differently, and even combine elements from different dresses: the top from one dress, with the back from another, combined with the skirt from a third dress.
We work with bridal studios who share our desire to make the dress perfect for you. Jesus Peiro, for instance, is hugely accommodating when it comes to combining elements from various dresses. As a result, the dress becomes specific to the bride. Unique dresses really are possible.
But it’s not just about how you look in your wedding dress. When fitting a dress, we are just as careful about how it feels to wear it. You’ll be wearing your dress for the whole day, including the celebrations in the evening. So it has to be comfortable throughout. The difference a nip and tuck here and there can make to how the dress fits your body is phenomenal, which in turn impacts your comfort.
Professional pride produces perfection
We take great pride in what we do. And we strive to offer you the most professional service possible. There are three pillars to our approach.
We view our relationship with our brides like a business partnership built on respect and clear communication. We want you to be involved and understand each step of the process. So we put a lot of effort into making sure things are clear in our dealings with you.
As we said before, we’ll be honest, not only about which dresses suit you and which don’t, but also if there are any delays or hiccoughs along the way. We’ll be open with you and if there is a problem, we’ll move heaven and Earth to sort it out.
We take huge pride in being able to draw on decades of experience to give you the best possible buying experience. At the same time, we know that the age gap between us and our brides is getting bigger with each year that passes. And we know it’s vital that we keep our eyes fresh and young when it comes to fashion trends, so that we stay relevant. To do so, we make sure we consult younger age groups as much as possible, even going so far as bringing someone younger with us to the Barcelona Bridal Fashion Week this year.
Taken together, these three pillars help keep us relevant and provide you with the best wedding dress experience possible.