January Carole's Corner

January 2014

Every year I promise myself that in the quieter months of November & December I will catch up with all those jobs that are labelled ‘one day.’ Have I got them done? No is the answer to that, again! I have done some of them and one day they may all get done, but by then there will be lots more have joined the never ending pile. Simple rule is, if it’s not for a customer, it goes onto the ‘one day’ pile.

Here is one of my ‘one day’ shelves, not a pretty sight!

So now here we are well into the first month of a new year and I have met lots of lovely new Brides-to-be who have moved into wedding planning mode and many of our Brides returning to carry on with their plans. So the start of 2014 has been a very busy one so far with a long list of weddings for this year I think I am going to be kept out of mischief!

I love sewing and perfecting the fit of a dress, this is something that I have loved doing since my school days, shhhh that’s a long time ago. What many of you don’t know is that I also love creating your invitations to give your guests an insight into your day from the time their invitation drops through their door. The creation of the invitation is the start of the creating and for the day I will create seating plan, post box & place cards all to co-ordinate with the invitation and your day.

Invitations were the start of my business. About 14 years ago, with a business partner, I started making invitations, favours and other customised accessories, making them at home and selling through wedding  and craft fayres. Time moved on and life made many changes and I bought the shop in 2001 with the intention of selling those items from within the shop. There was more space than required for the items sold in the shop area so dresses were introduced and back to my first skill, sewing. As any of you that have visited my shop will know, it is now very full, wedding dresses take a lot of space! Many new customers walk through the door each week and are amazed at the choices on offer. Friendly service is at the top of the list for me, with privacy and discretion on an equal level, it is a privilege to be helping you with your plans, you may walk in as a stranger but you will be a friend very soon.

There is always lots to do when you are helping an long list of Brides-to-be plan the best day of their lives, I am always here to help with many aspects of the build up and your day and love hearing your plans and helping you pull everything together to co-ordinate and flow.

Looking forward to seeing you soon. Carole x

Doing Your Research

This week's Wedding Wednesday post is all about doing your research before you buy. Although a few weeks ago we told you that sometimes you should just go with your instinct and buy, it is also sensible to know what kind of dress styles you are interested in. This blog is about some steps you could go through to help you find your dream dress.

Collecting Your Initial Ideas

Eco-Green Wedding Theme ©myrivierawedding

Take time to look through wedding magazines. Although a lot of them are full of adverts, there are many helpful sections (not just on wedding dresses either). Often there are whole sections on themes for your wedding day, we think this is such a good idea. It is often hard to think of colour schemes and themes, but the ideas in magazines have been thoroughly thought out with examples of how you could pull it off.

Many magazines will show you what's in vogue this season, this can be useful but don't get too tied up in the styles. If you really like the style of a dress, don't be put off because it's not a brand new dress style. It's your dress, and no one is going to be able to tell on the day if it's 2014 or 2009. If you think you won't be able to get hold of an older style, think again, many shops hold stock from the previous couple of years, and often it is these gowns which go into the sales.

After Booking Appointments

     Most bridal stores have clear websites which will show you many of the dresses they have in store. It's always nice to have a bride come in who has an idea of the styles she likes, or even if there was a style that she wants to stay away from. Some brides come in to our shop with the name of the perfect dress from our site, and then go on to buy it, others talk about the kind of fabric they like and we go from there. Remember, not all dresses look the same in person, so you don't necessarily want to rule out a dress completely because you didn't like the photograph. 

     Write down any dresses you like on the website and say why. Comments on style only help us help you choose your dress. We have such a varied collection at Especially For You that it would be hard to try every style in one appointment. If there are any other images you've found from searching the internet, save a picture onto your phone and bring it in. Any way in which we can help you find the dress of your dreams is a bonus to us.

     Also arrive with an idea of budget. Our website is sorted into price brackets, so you can have an idea of the price of a dress. When you arrive, we don't want to show you any dress that you can't afford, it's unfair if you then fall in love with it.

     If you want to buy bridesmaid dresses, bring in a colour swatch of the colour you want. Or bring in an object that you like the colour of, like a piece of ribbon, or a flower. It can literally be anything. If you're out and about, and you see the colour that you have been unable to put into words for weeks, pick it up, buy it (we don't condone stealing...) and bring it with you. We bet it is so infuriating for the brides when they can't quite describe the colour that they want to us! 

We hope this has helped to give you some ideas on how the best way research is, but just remember not to get too bogged down with the internet and it's vast amount of information. After all, you never know until you try a dress on what it is going to look like. Please comment and tell us of your researching before your wedding appointments. Did you buy every wedding magazine available or did you just walk into your first appointment with no idea of what you likes? Whatever experiences you had, we would love to know.

Bridesmaids!!!

If you've come here for a review of the film, you might be in the wrong place, but if you're here for the pretty dresses, you have definitely come to the right place! We started this blog last October, and we can't believe we've not done a post on bridesmaids' dresses yet, so that is about to change...

At Especially For You, we mainly stock Alexia bridesmaids' dresses, as we find they have such a wide variety of styles available that there is a dress to suit everyone. Whether the fabric be taffeta or shantung, the dress long or tea length, Alexia have it covered. Then there is the huge array of colours to choose from. Each dress is available in a certain set of colours, we call this their colour card. To give you an idea of how many options you have, on one colour card there are 64 satin colours, on another 42 chiffons. We know it means a lot to a bride to be able to buy her dream bridesmaid dresses, and that means getting the dresses in the colour you really want.

Obviously we can't stock every dress in every colour, and some brides tell us it's is often hard to picture what their bridesmaids dresses will look like in Cadbury's Purple. This is where the Alexia website comes in. Once you order your perfect dresses in the right colour, we will give you a swatch of the fabric. You can go to Alexia's website and change the colour of the dresses pictured to get an overall feel of how the dress will look when it arrives (we always say be careful doing this though, because colours can look different from computer to computer, always refer to the swatch when matching colours).
On to our most popular Bridesmaid dresses, a chiffon dress and a satin dress.

Ax55

This dress is a beautifully flowing chiffon dress, where the tie can be made into a bow at the back over the zip, or hang loosely at the front. As you can see, the dress can be all one colour or two. There are 40 colour choices for this dress, so plenty to choose from. We think one of the reasons this dress is so popular is that it flatters everyone who wears it, whether you wear it as is, or we add chiffon straps. Click here to see the dress on our website. There is also a matching junior bridesmaid style, which is quite unusual to find with bridesmaid dresses, and these range in age from 4 to 16 years. It saves a lot of time when you don't have to go round the high street for a dress that looks similar for a little girl. The little ones have spaghetti straps, but again we can add extra fabric to make larger straps, it depends on how you decide to have yours. Find the junior dress on our website here.

Ax10

 Ax10 is a satin dress that is brilliantly versatile and looks so different in every colour. Like Ax55, you can have the dress all one colour or a main colour with a different band, and with about 60 colours to choose from, there are more than 3600 combinations. That's quite a lot, even the pickiest bridesmaids can't complain about that selection. This is a very flattering style, the satin hangs beautifully and creates an elegant and chic image. Again, there is a matching junior style, perhaps this is why these two styles are so popular. The junior style is available in ages 4 to 16, see it here. We think this might be our favourite satin bridesmaid dress, but why don't you find your own favourite by going on our website.

Now is a great time to order with us because of our brand new bridesmaid discounts. We no longer alter bridesmaid dresses that are ordered with us, so instead, we decided to introduce a discount that has become very popular with our brides. When you're budgeting for a wedding, any savings help. 

Hope you enjoyed this weeks wedding wednesday post, if you've seen the bridesmaid dress of your dreams, don't hesitate to give us a call and book an appointment. If not, have a browse on : www.especiallyforyoubridal.co.uk/bridesmaids

If You Love It, Go For It!!!

This week's Wedding Wednesday follows on quite a bit from last week, where we talked about making sure you didn't visit too many shops with the mindset of "There may be another dress around the corner I haven't seen". When you go out dress shopping, this is the wrong way to think about buying, you need to go with the idea that when you see your dream gown, you buy!
There are a few reasons why you would want to order your dress as soon as you see it:

Friends

Now, having friends is lovely, we all know that, but having friends who are getting married exactly two weeks before you is less lovely (even if you do plaster your face with a smile every time they mention it). If you visit a shop, you need to know if anyone you know has bought a dress from there. Here at Especially For You, we will ask you this when you arrive, so we don't sell the same dress to two friends. It's nice to be able to say that no, none of your friends have their dresses from here, because I GOT HERE FIRST! Once you put your dress on order we can't show it to anyone you know (so make sure you spread the word in your circle where you purchased your dress). Wouldn't it be a shame if you came in, found your perfect dress, waited three months to order it and found your work colleague has ordered the same one.

Gone? Where's It Gone?

Once you've found your dream dress, the last thing you want is for it to disappear. Most shops will sell a dress off the rail if the gown fits a girl really well, or she has a wedding coming up really soon. It would be a disaster if you found out that a dress you loved had gone. You would still probably be able to order the dress into store, but that would mean you wouldn't see the dress until about 20-24 weeks after you ordered it. This is a long time for you to wait for a dress without trying it on for the last time, and it's hard to remember what it looks like exactly, especially when you might be thinking about ordering bridesmaid styles that need to match.

The Designer Says No

Having sold off the rail isn't the worst way you can lose your dream dress. You may find that if you wait too long, your dress has been discontinued, and is no longer available to order. Companies usually give us a months notice before discontinuing a dress, so we can pass this message onto any interested brides to get their orders in, but this isn't something we want brides to have to deal with. A designer will sometimes hold some remaining stock that we can try to get hold of, but the chance of this being the case is small if you want any colour other than ivory.  All this is just adding to your stress levels, and that's not what we want to happen, when you could have had the dress ordered months ago. We do realise, however, that you have less idea than us (and we have very little!) of when a dress will stop being reorderable. The only other way to help you stay out of this situation is to say that a designers dress list will be published twice a year, once at the beginning of Spring, and once at the start of Autumn.

Too Many Dresses

There is such thing as too many dresses, and we've seen this happen too many times. There comes a point when you've tried on so many that you've been blinded to your likes and dislikes. It's hard to remember what looked good and what didn't. You might even lose the One you found a couple of weeks ago. We often find that those who come to us first or after one or two shops find the decision a lot easier than brides who visit after 10 others. There are only so many wedding dresses your brain can cope with before shutting down.


Moral of the story: If you've found it and you love it clap your hands... then order it! Thanks for reading this weeks Wedding Wednesday post, hope to hear from you in the comments.

Happy New Year... Now Get Organising!!!

Planning a wedding is one big task, especially for those who aren't the most organised people in the world. A wedding is meant to be one of the happiest days of your life, but this label just adds more pressure on you to get it perfect. To top it all of, you only get one chance to get it perfect! Here are some of our top tips on how to stay cool when planning the wedding, along with guidelines of when to book venues and order attire.

Make sure you keep a diary 

We like to give a little one to our brides when they purchase from us, just to put in dates like when their dress will arrive in stock, and when next appointment for a fitting is. It can also be a good idea to invest in a big, old fashioned, paper organiser. With these, you can never go wrong. Try to find one with lots of dividers, to make sure you have plenty of room. If you can find an organiser with space for an inspiration board, that would be brilliant. It's always a great help for us bridal stores when a bride comes in with tonnes of ideas in mind. Keep track of your budget in the organiser, along with a guest list and section for important phone numbers. Having all this information in one place just helps to reduce the stress of planning a little bit - the last thing you need on the way to your big day is to lose that scrap of paper with the florist's phone number on, just as you need to tell her there will be one extra buttonhole required.

Ordering Attire

Wedding dress - 

The dress needs to be on order at least 7 months before the day to leave time for alterations, but the usual is about 12 months. Start looking a few months before you want to get your dress ordered, and make sure you don't visit too many shops to find your perfect dress. After a while, it turns into a laborious task, all the dresses just merge into one and you have no chance of working out which you like best. Start early but be prepared to stop looking when you get that special feeling about a dress. Don't feel like there is just another dress around the corner that you haven't seen at that might be the one, just go for it! If you've seen all the dresses you want to see, but are worried because none seem to be "the one", take some time out for a few weeks. Whichever dresses keep appearing in your head when you try to stop thinking about weddings should probably be tried on again! 

Bridesmaid dresses -

Order after the wedding dress, to match the dress style and fabric. Now, before you say "but isn't this obvious?" we have had brides come into our shop before now who have already bought their bridesmaid dresses, and now need to find a wedding dress to match. We recommend having bridesmaid dresses on order about 5 months before the wedding, as although they don't take as long to arrive as bridal dresses, it is often hard to get all the maids together for alterations. Also, have a few colours in mind; sometimes it's hard to get a perfect match on a colour and you don't want to limit your dress options because of this. We do try our upmost to find the right colour, although it can mean compromising on style, as each dress has a certain collection of colours it can be purchased in. However, there is a choice of over 60 colours on some dresses. 

Suits - 

These need to be ordered after have bridesmaids, but don't leave it until the last minute. Give the men a swatch of bridesmaid dress fabric to match the colour of ties to your theme, or a swatch from the bridal dress if it is a slightly unusual colour. If you are hiring the suits, have them arrive a few days before the wedding in order to check that the right sizes have been delivered. Although you would expect them to, sometimes companies may not have a size readily available so send the closest they have. These extra few days can mean you have time to change an ill-fitting suit in time for the big day.

Booking

Venue -

It is often hard to find your dream venue for the date you want, so try to book it as soon as possible. It's often the case that your wedding date turns out to be the date the venue has available. Also make sure you consider the cost; the venue will often be more expensive in early summer than in late autumn, so see what your budget will allow and try not to go over.

Flowers - 

We advise you to contact your florist at least 3 months before your actual wedding date to begin planning. If your wedding is larger than average, in the summer months, or at christmas, 6 months might be needed to ensure you get your prefered florist. Remember to bring colour swatches with you, as well as an idea of quantity (this will change depending on the size of your venue and how many bridesmaids you have).

Photographer - 

Make sure before you choose your photographer you read plenty of reviews and talk to other brides to find out who they used. It's not all about finding someone who is reliable, although of course that is important, it's also about finding a photographer with the right style for you. You may want traditional portraits taking, or something a bit quirky. Maybe it's all about the way they are printed afterwards (we hear that some photographers now make little notebooks filled with your wedding photos, so you can take them to show people more easily). After you've found the right person for you, and made sure you've stuck to your budget, contact them to sort out dates. This should be done around the time you book your florist. 

Honeymoon

 Not everyone goes on a holiday after the wedding, but if you do make sure to plan it well in advance. This way you may be able to get better deals on flights, and you'll be more likely to secure a place in a location you really love. However, if you really fancy leaving it until the last minute, you can get heavy discounts on hotels as they try to fill up their rooms. Be sure to factor this honeymoon into your budget, a lot of couples forget and it can cause all sorts of hassle further on down the line.

Insurance

A lot of brides forget about insurance, but it can just put your mind at rest. Depending on the extent of the insurance, you can cover just your bridal attire, or the entire event. You really need to look at what kind of cover you need in order to find the prices. As Especially For You is part of the British Bridal Retailers Association, we can offer free wedding insurance for bridal attire up to the cost of £1000. If you wanted to upgrade to cover areas like delayed travel if going abroad, or public liability, you can get it at a massive discount. 

If all this seems like too much stress and hard work, you can always go to the professionals. Wedding planners are often able to save you money in the long run, as they can get discounts off their usual suppliers, and are very efficient at what they do. It can take a massive weight off you shoulders if you know that someone else is helping you on your journey towards the big day. Make sure you do your research first before hiring a planner; read reviews, talk to local wedding suppliers and ask your friends what experiences they have had with wedding planners. This way you'll be able to decide whether using a wedding planner is the right thing for you. We always advise customers looking for a wedding planner to find somebody local, that way any suppliers they use won't be too far away for you to visit if you need to. 

That is all for this week, hope you enjoyed reading and found our advice useful. Do you have any questions about timescales for ordering? Maybe you've just got married and have some advice for other brides. In any case, feel free to comment below. Happy New Year, and best wishes for 2014!