Bridal gowns are the wedding industry's ultimate icon
Being a wedding planner without first learning about bridal gowns and wedding dress design places you at a disadvantage. Wedding coordinator duties include visiting and becoming familiar with local wedding dress boutiques, wedding dress shops, and wedding dress stores. Starting a wedding planning business requires getting to know store owners and hotel catering directors on a first name basis: like wedding venues, wedding dress shops are the place where most couples begin when planning a wedding without having hired a professional wedding planner. Bridal gowns and accessories represent a large part of the modern wedding budget. The multibillion-dollar wedding industry created this condition and spends millions to preserve it. Big wedding dress stores mark up merchandise significantly and motivate personnel to persuade customers to spend more. Small wedding dress boutiques compete for customers through expensive co-op advertising, responding to pressure from bridal magazines and the designer brands that make up most wedding dress shops' inventory. But traditional white wedding dress design, like the big white wedding cake, is a relic of the Victorian era, when bridal gowns worn by blushing virgins communicated a message that is oddly out of tune with current times. What do weddings planners do? Keeping up with avant-garde wedding trends is important. Knowing all about traditional bridal gowns and wedding dress design is essential.
Learn the Facts about Wedding Dress Stores before You Begin
Unlike engagement and wedding rings, most bridal gowns sold in America are mass-produced in China. Some customers leverage this information and comparison-shop at chain wedding dress stores and discount wedding dress shops looking for the best deal they can negotiate. As a result, local wedding dress boutiques with a limited wedding dress design line selection, an experienced staff seamstress, and high co-op advertising costs operate with a smaller and smaller profit, while continuing to give better service. Many of these independent boutiques also create custom-made bridal gowns sewn on site. Mass-manufactured bridal gowns, wedding dresses, and accessories purchased from chain wedding dress stores and discount wedding dress shops may cost less, but the less-personal process of selection, fitting, and final delivery takes longer and often adds to wedding stress. Given the time, money, and frequent tension involved, it’s crucial for couples getting married and professionals learning how to become a wedding planner to understand the economic facts about wedding dresses before beginning. It's also vital to become familiar with dress design and fabric options, as well as important differences in scale, price, and service quality, between chain wedding dress stores, discount wedding dress shops, and custom wedding dress boutiques. An expert in creating contemporary wedding dress design solutions for discerning clients and operating competitive wedding dress shops in an urban environment is the best possible guide.
Course Video Tutorial: 'A Wedding Dress Designer Teaches Bridal Gowns and Wedding Dresses' (32:35)
Maite Ortoll, a talented wedding dress design artist, has managed sales at wedding dress shops including Novella Bridal, one of a number of busy wedding dress boutiques located in downtown San Francisco. A graduate of the San Francisco Art Institute, she serves a multi-ethnic clientele and understands the wedding planner business as a colleague with fresh wedding ideas about theme weddings adaptable to almost any culture. Her intelligence, imagination, and refreshing humor make her a friendly source of information and inspiration for brides, grooms, and wedding planners who need to know the facts about bridal gowns, wedding dress design, and how wedding dress stores operate. In this course video tutorial, Maite teaches Members all about selecting and ordering wedding gowns, accessories, and bridesmaids' dresses. Aided by her assistant, she answers probing questions from New York visual design expert Alan Brasington, RADA, while demonstrating various styles and cuts and explaining how different dress designs flatter different figures as clients are fitted at one of San Francisco’s leading wedding dress boutiques.
Learn 12 essential elements of selecting, ordering, and accessorizing bridal gowns and wedding dresses:
- How bridal gowns became wedding icons
- The importance of not visiting too few or too many shops
- What and whom to bring to the initial consultation
- How the wedding planner and the groom can expedite the selection process
- How to use experimentation and elimination to make a final decision
- Why custom-made dresses are a smart choice for brides with style
- The factors that inflate designer-line costs and turnaround time
- How to fit the bride's dress to her personality, look, and body shape
- Go-green ideas for reusable bridesmaids' dresses
- How to economize, customize, and accessorize creatively
- When buying a sample dress makes perfect sense
- Wedding dress fabrics, styles, designs, and shapes
