Luxe Bride – Luxury Bridal Retailers Conference

Bridal retailing can be a very glamorous business. It is also a very serious business. Having someone’s dreams to fulfil whilst maintaining an eye on your company is a juggling act in itself. Include in the mix that most bridal retailers are women with families and you have the ultimate multi-tasking profession that is demanding of one’s time, skill, talent & emotion.

Inspired by connections made over Twitter, along with casual meals and drinks on buying trips, a core of amazing luxury bridal retailers have started to come together and talk as fellow professionals in the same way that the UK Alliance of Wedding Planners have done and following the inspiration of projects like The Paper Girls.

The setting was Fetcham Park, not only a beautiful location, but part of Laura Caudery’s portfolio of wedding venues. Laura Caudery was the first person to show me the value of cross discipline networking throughout the wedding industry and it was a fitting stage for the first meeting.

I may well have formalised the meeting, arranged an agenda and bought in the big guns of Kalm Kitchen & Bloomingayles to feed both body and soul, but the day was about unity & collaboration rather than power broking or domination.

It may seem pretentious to name a group as ‘Luxury’, but the ongoing name will be Luxe Bride with the hashtag #luxebrideuk . This is not to say there aren’t legions of brilliant bridal business operating in other markets & price points. Vintage, budget, once worn, designer retailer, High Street multiple – there are categories galore – all with their own unique characteristics.

Subsequent to the meeting there has been debate on how Luxury is defined and which shops would want to be  included or are eligible for inclusion.

The first attendees were definitely the most fearless, prepared to face the daunting task of meeting their direct competitors and talking business. Something that is very commonplace in other industries and, dare I say, amongst traditional male run companies.

Luxe Bride shops are defined by our clients, today’s brides, not ourselves. One cannot be a luxury bridal retailer just by having fancy wallpaper & cool mirrors. A Luxe Bride retailer will inherently know how the bride thinks. They will know which photographers are the best to work with, the venues that ooze style & the florists that refuse to stud roses with diamente. A Luxe Bride retailer knows quality, invests in the best labels, provides a thorough service from first visit to the final blog post.

The concept of Luxe Bride is in its infancy, it may dwindle, it may stay as a quarterly conference, it may grow & be of huge benefit to brides & designers alike.

You may wonder why I have included detail shots. The catering, the flowers, the location.

By way of explanation I will refer to the last Bridal Buyer Retail Awards I attended, held in Harrogate, during a trade show. The room, hosting very many of the best UK retailers & designers, from budget to bounteous, was draped with star curtains, the chairs were covered in the worst slippery nylon covers and the tables had table confetti . Does it make me a snob to think that this is horribly dated and a poor way of demonstrating what the UK wedding industry can do?

I don’t think so. It shows a lack of commitment from the ‘establishment’ to design excellence, quality & an inability to lead by example. It perpetuates the perception of naffness of weddings so glorified by reality TV. It was important to me personally to showcase luxury and critically to show that this doesn’t mean ostentatious displays of over consumption.

Below right is a picture of Ellie Sanderson, a multi award-winning bridal retailer, & me!

Frankly  – am I mad? Why have I put pictures of competitors on my blog? In a Harry Potter-ish sense will my competitors go away if I don’t utter their names in a  superstitious ‘he who shall not be named’ sense? Of course not.

Will our individuality be lost by talking to other retailers? Of course not. It simply emphasises the difference & individuality of each retailer whilst acknowledging our common professional standards. If anything, meeting with these remarkable women has made me realise that whilst we may cross over on certain dresses our approach to our brides is unique, tailored to regional tastes, preferences, budgets & traditions.

The retailers shown in the gallery are not ‘signed-up’ for anything, not committed to a group, nothing is finalised. If nothing else, fellow retailers, as and when the next invitations are sent, I would recommend coming if you didn’t before. Where else could you find all the contributing retail writers for Bridal Buyer, the Chair of the RBA and gobby old-timers like me in the same place ready to talk business?

Designers & manufacturers, & I’m sure one or two of you will read this, we love your frocks, baubles, frills & furbelows. This doesn’t mean we are so dazzled by diamante that we don’t mean business.

Brides, clients, interested observers. I can assure you competition is always a good thing for the customer. It is the bedrock of capitalist economics. Facing my competition was amazing. I felt good about what I know I do well & determined to be better in areas that were unwittingly highlighted to me by other’s chance remarks. I felt honoured to be among my peers and judged worthy by them.

I would like to thank Laura, Jen, Gayle, Eddie & Leah for making me look good. I would like to thank Leyla for making me look efficient. I would like to thank Emma & Tamryn for their PR  writing skills & helping me summarise a voluble day into a readable account. I would like to thank Ellie for helping us get the trade talking.

VIEW THE FULL GALLERY

SUPPLIERS

Photography: Eddie Judd Photography
Venue: Fetcham Park
Flowers: Bloomin’gayles
Catering: Kalm Kitchen
PR & Writing Service: Emma Woodhouse & Tamryn Lawrence
Graphics & IT: Leah Spicer, Golden Apple Creative Design

Emma xxx

Emma Meek, MD of Miss Bush Bridalwear
Miss Bush Bridalwear is Surrey’s leading designer bridal shop