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A couple of useful Wedding Ideas & Tips:

Dress Code:

When it comes to what not to wear to a wedding, unless you spell it out, Wedding Guests will come in all sorts - Jeans, Flip-flops....... I can't understand why people will make more effort to dress up for their office's Christmas party than a friend or loved one's Wedding.

So if you don't want guests to wear hats, make sure you say so on the invites (ala Sophie & Edward). If you want guests to dress up, I suggest you state Black Tie.

Brides sometimes also ask female guests not to wear a certain colour, for instance if you are wearing red, you might wish to veto red, though often that request is like a red rag to a bull (excuse the pun)& the girlfriend of your best man or someone else will swan in, in something both inappropriate & red in an attempt to upstage you. Equally I am always amazed at how many ladies will turn up at a wedding in ivory or cream dresses or bodice/skirt combos, which given most brides wear a bridal shade is a bit mean.

Scary Spice, Posh Spice & a number of other celebs have requested guests all dress in white for their weddings or stipulated some other tight dress code but this will only really work if you are a Celeb.

If you are having a masked ball or costume wedding, expect to have to work at your guests to get them onboard & do all the research to make it easy for them to get the costumes. Some guests will be very anti your idea if it involves more than a little effort & it won't be the same if only half play ball.

The cool way to drink your Champers:

Mini Landon Black Label, Mini Moets, Baby Pipers.................

There are at least half a dozen brands bottling their Champagne in 1/4 bottles that come with branded straws. Models at London Fashion Week are always snapped sipping Mini Moets but I love the look of the Baby Pipers (below). I find the frivolous Pipers are perfect for toasting, when clients come in to collect their gowns.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Photographers:

I generally like female photographers better because they tend to have a better rapport with the bride & have a better eye & I like the ones that will stay on into the evening. I think it's better to pay a bit more for a professional, sober person to capture those great party moments that crop up when the booze starts flowing & everyone hits the dance floor than waste money on disposable cameras & develop image upon image of drunk guest's self portraits! Also with so many people having digital cameras, the need to buy in the disposable kind seems even more pointless.

What I will say is watch your photographer - if you are precious about your dress & want to keep it clean, don't let them sit you on dirty, wet benches, lean you against dirty walls or arrange your train in the mud for the sake of art. Sometimes photographers are a little too focused on the photos & most don't care whether your dress still looks good when you go in to have your meal, just as long as they've got what they want in the can. Remember if your wedding looks great, they'll be keen to get what they want for competition shots, exhibitions & their portfolio & that may come before what you want. Also make sure they know what you want & that you're getting it, keep quiet & you'll be smarting for years about those images you didn't get.

As for the 'getting ready' & 'dressing' shots, just remember your photographer owns the copyright on your wedding photos & you don't want them getting anything you wouldn't want to see in print. So unless you are a very confident bride who is happy to have images of you in a G-sting & veil on the World Wide Web, used in an ad or exhibited at a local or national bridal show, keep your photographer out of the room, no matter how pushy they are (& some are) until you are in a state of undress you are comfortable with appearing in photos. That's another reason to engage a female photographer, some male photographers I have run in to whilst dressing brides are out & out perves. I remember one, who was 'helping' to tidy a bride's hotel room, picked up some lingerie & purred, "mmmm, it's still warm"!!! Vile! Vile, vile vile!

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   Log on, donate to charity & create your mini-masterpiece.

Below: Helpful & funny videos that explain The One Million Masterpiece.

   

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4 September 2006 ~

Celebrity Weddings part three - The sneeky peek:

Do you remember when Madonna got married to Guy Ritche at Skebo Castle in Scotland? And do you also remember that the public have never seen any pics from the event (well other than photographers standing outside the castle grounds looking desperate)? Well, last week on Ebay a charity raising money for victims of Hurricane Katrina put up for auction the tiara Madonna's wore for that wedding. I must admit I was surprised Madonna a) wore one & b) that it was such a classic, old fashioned affair, we can only guess at what she may have worn it with but here's a glimpse of part of that bridal trousseau thanks to Ebay:

 

 

 

The tiara, which had a starting price of just over £118,000 did not sell, perhaps because it didn't have enough press or perhaps because with no pics of the wedding, how could anyone believe it really was worn by Madonna on her Wedding Day? Certainly people are not as trusting of the whole Ebay thing as they used to be & no wonder with so many fakes & scams going on.

Everytime you place a bid these days you really have to weigh up whether you are taking a risk, Ebay is not the most helpful when things go wrong & talking from experience, often turns a blind eye to bad sellers especially if they are doing the numbers & paying Ebay big & regular auction fees, grrrr.

 

And talking of Ebay.....

They have this new bit where users can write reviews & guides. Can I just say uh oh & can't imagine they'll keep this going for long!

The often disgruntled buyers have been given their soap box. Some have similar grumbles to me, others are airing problems they've come up against in the spirit of hoping others don't make the same mistakes or are warning of scams & fakes & there is a lot of noise about China.

The Internet & Ebay have been drawing Bride-to-be's like moths to a flame & though I'm sure many have very good buying experiences, it must be said that some do not.

Brides, often on budgets, are looking to Ebay to find the dress they saw in a magazine or shop for less & there are lots of sellers waiting on Ebay to take advantage of this. The Bridal Industry is very anti-internet selling , they have to be seen to protect their retailers (the shops) & most manufacturers will not sell to any company selling dresses online. So apart from the genuine brides selling on their dress, a lot of the other branded dresses offered for sale (like many of the Prada, Chanel & Dior handbags on Ebay) are cheap fakes & the non branded dresses are not what they are promised to be either. Since July this year, a number of brides have put their stories on Ebay's site & I think, in the spirit of making all Ebay buyers a lot for savvy & less vulnerable, they're worth sharing. I have blanked out the reviewers details & the details of the people they name & shame but these can all be found on Ebay's site:

know that when you run in to a bad Ebay seller the experience can be very unpleasant. They can be very rude, if you can get an answer at all, & you don't always see your money again. I use Ebay, I love Ebay - when it works & I have been burned on Ebay though I haven't lost much & we're not talking about anything important.

Though, obviously I have clients on budgets, their budgets are still extremely healthy compared with the brides who tend to turn to Ebay, so this diary entry is not about turning brides away from Ebay in the hope of picking up work & equally, I don't have a shop selling manufactured gowns so I am not financially effected by the sales of knock off branded wedding dresses. I may not work at the lower priced end of the bridal market but I do work in it & I know brides & it makes me sick to think of any bride spending what they have on a dress, that promises to be the dress of their dreams, only to find themselves with no dress, no time & no money to get another one. It is every bride's ultimate horror scenario & as you have read, it is happening. Advice: So before you place a bid & send your money, calculate the risks & don't spend everything you've got if you can't afford to loose it or to run into problems. Second hand dresses bought from the bride or shops that specialise in selling second hand wedding dresses are the safer bet & even if a dress is a 6 hour round tip away - if you want it, you'll make the trip & check the dress over before you take it away. Bridal shops are the other way to go. Yes, they will charge you more than internet prices but they will be genuine goods.

Bridal Shops & manufactured dresses:

That's not to say there are pitfalls with ordering manufacturers dresses from shops too & when I have time I will share some of the stories I hear. You may be surprised to hear that bridal shops have one hell of a time dealing with manufacturers & they're the ones that have to try & make the best of any problems the manufacturer is responsible for when it all goes wrong. And from what I have been privy to, as a friend of someone who stuck their toe in these waters, I can tell you that most of the manufacturers don't care about or respect the women that wear their dresses one bit & don't have much respect for their buyers, the retailers, either! When the dresses are behind deadline, come in the wrong colour, arrive with bits missing, etc. for the retailer trying to sort things out, it can be a case of tell them this, tell them there was a style change, if they call us we'll blame you, we'll say this, sort it out yourself, emails & faxes are ignored, orders misfiled, if some of these manufacturers had a mantra it would be 'just show us the money' and let me tell you a lot of that money goes to China. There are a lot of British designers & their brands who are now owned by a Chinese millionaire businessman & those dresses are, on the whole, all being made up in China & you would probably be surprised at the brands he owns. Talking to brides who come out to buy tiaras, I am amazed how many have no idea where their dress is being made. I'd say look at the label but according to Fashion Babylon - I may rename it Fashion Bible, you only have to sew a couple of buttons on here in the UK to label a garment made in Britain, but still you can see what the label says & ask your retailer questions.

Advice:After taking a paddle in the ready to wear market, my friend would advise that if you're told 12-16 weeks, expect it to be 16+. She'd say allow six months for delivery & eight is better in case the dress has to go back or another one sent.

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10 September 2006 ~

Oct/Nov '06 WEDDING Magazine:

I have a Designer Profile in the new issue of Wedding magazine:

 

Read the Profile.

 

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13 September 2006 ~

 

In the spirit of all those school reports kids up & down the country will be asked to write about 'what I did in the Summer holidays', heres my:

 

 

Last weekend I went to Harrogate........

 

Harrogate, for a few days twice a year, becomes home to the oestrogen soaked atmosphere of the BBEH (British Bridal Exhibition). This is the trade fair where manufacturers of wedding dresses, veils, shoes, hats, head-dresses, etc. from the UK & around the world ply their wares to bridal buyers that descend on this quaint spa town from all over the world. Why Harrogate? I haven’t got a clue but it does seem odd so maybe there’s some significant connection between the area & the bridal wear industry?

 

So, anyway, twice a year a large contingent of our industry – manufacturers, buyers & the editors & fashion teams from the wedding magazines go to Harrogate. As a couture designer I have no real need to go but every once in a while I decide to show my face:

• to check out the general direction bridal wear is going in - which I can tell you is quite depressing & it isn’t going anywhere fast,

• see if there are any significant colour themes I should be aware of. In fashion, if blue/brown/grey at various times are labelled the new black, in bridal fashion next season, as it was this season, pink is the new white.

• say hello to the various magazine peeps I bump in to & remind them that the high end, couture designers such as myself, of which more & more these days are jumping ship & going in to manufacturing (or going half way with a manufactured diffusion ranges), are not represented at the show but are still out there. As you can imagine, it’s easy for them to see a huge number of dresses & earmark things to call in for the next six months of fashion shoots (that’s only three issues) by flitting from one hall to another over the three days of the show & to not give any thought to what the couture designers are up to. Designers like myself do get things called in because you won’t find real couture at Harrogate & you won’t find me or other designers with very distinct signature styles at the show but it then becomes a question of making sure they know you’re still out there & making sure they know what new pieces you have in your collection. If you have a London showroom, you can normally get the fashion teams out for a visit but if you’re out of town you need to be more pro-active. I went to Harrogate to go to ‘Wedding’s party, meet Katherine the new Editor & Alex the newish Fashion Editor & hear what Katherine had to say about the planned changes for the mag.

If you’re not trade & therefore not exhibiting at Harrogate, your chance to showcase yourself to the press is The Designer Wedding Show which showcases the high end stuff to the brides but for various reasons I have so far chosen not to do it – timing wise November is too late to show as I’m well on the way to being fully booked for the following year & I think too that the February show will attract moneyed brides looking to marry within twelve months, so again I’m already well or fully booked. It’s a shame because the magazines do seem to go to the show & give exhibitors columns of editorial but it would be silly to sink thousands into a stand only to have to say to brides “sorry I’m booked”. Plus I have some moral issues with the organisers because they a) seem to have a ‘London is best philosophy’ – they will hard sell London designers into taking stands but don’t seem to look outside London for the rest of the cream of UK designers, b) they have ‘designers’ there that are high end manufacturers or are posh shops that stock American & European high end ‘off-the-peg’ & c) one has to ‘apply’ & prove your worth by filling out a questionnaire detailing the number of employees one has, the price (highest & lowest) of one’s goods, one’s press editorial over the last year & if one has celebrity clients (in which case they want to know who), then there is a bit on the form where you can add anything extra you think may impress them enough to allow you to show at their prestigious event! Now I understand a need to screen exhibitors but what exactly can be ascertained from one’s number of full & part time employees & if a designer has celebrity clients, a good one will be discrete & not brag about who they’ve done! I find the whole thing incredibly pretentious & it’s not like the role call of designers they have got is that impressive (a lot of the biggest names are off the peg via Browns Bride, etc.) or wide ranging, as with what you get from most of the London designers, paying London overheads, the dresses are simple, contemporary & almost exclusively white or ivory & are designed to appeal to a wide audience e.g. ‘err on the side of caution’ Sloane types. If I were in London I’d have to conform or starve, so I’m not in London! Anyway after the initial pounce on London designers to sell the first show, they seem to have enough designers willing to audition via the offensive & insulting form procedure to keep the stands full – personally, I think all they really need to do is view a designer’s website or brochure to decide whether they can take a stand & had they done so they might have a better & more interesting mix.

 

10 September 2006 ~ 

I met up in Harrogate with a colleague Sunday night to go to the ‘Wedding ’ party & between us we made a sterling attempt to drink to the value of our latest adverts in Champagne, Black Russians & Kahlua & no I did not get liquored up enough to set foot on the dance floor & I probably made more of a pin prick in the bar bill than any dent against the advertising revenue I spend with the mag. A dent would have involved alcohol poisoning & stomach pumping & doesn’t make for a good impression on one’s hosts   ;)  I like the new team & with an Editor with a fashion background now onboard who seems to understand what the magazine needs I have high hopes, plus they had a free bar which will always win you friends.

 

11 September 2006 ~

Can I just say, the above concoction of alcohol will get you blissfully boozy but have no hangover head or induce nausea at the site of a cooked breakfast, which was great because the exhibition halls seemed to be sans air conditioning on an Indian Summer day - sods! Plus I had to do the three & a half hour drive home that evening. Bypassing racks of gaudy, preformed, ‘ghetto princess’ / lap dancer bodices teamed with vile skirts & OTT shoes & my ‘favorites’, the lampshade dresses we were on the hunt for veils & shoes. 

 

The ‘lampshade’ as I call them, is a dress that has a stiff cone shaped skirt with fabric worked onto it in a way that says ‘look at this interesting design with it’s extravagant styling & generous use of fabric’, whilst using fabric as sparingly as possible. These dresses will have drapes stretched tight across them with minimal gathering, small swags, the bunching up of small areas to give the illusion of volume & suggestion of layering fabrics to suggest opulence. Slap on a bit of lace, some flowers, feathers or bows & you have a dress fit for a fancy dress party (tish, tish, naughty me), I meant to say Wedding!  What I find really scary is that these are manufacturers dresses with the ‘design’ reflecting a firm nod towards budget & getting the best result from the minimum outlay in fabrics & trimmings because, with many of these dresses being knocked up in China, the labour bit is the cheapest bit. These dresses then get marked up by x2.5 or x3. There is an Aubergine, voluminous ‘lampshade’ dress by Ian Stuart, granted it’s at the nicer end of lampshades, (I don’t know where his are made) in this months Cosmo Bride & it is £3000 – good grief if you’ve got that kind of money to spend surely it’s better to look to made-to-measure couture than buy a dress that probably wholesaled for around £1000 & made the manufacturer a healthy profit from that £1000 – what, in real terms, would be the true value of a any manufactured dress, bought from a shop for £3000? Sobering, isn’t it? If you want to buy a lampshade, you can buy some very pretty lampshades:     Then there’s the kitsch lamp, this one I own, that looks like a dress (well can can skirt) & this works because it’s kitsch!:

 

Veils & shoes for my friend & I was on the look out for shoes but only if they were perfect  (I studied shoe design at college & am both a shoe connoisseur & shoe snob!) & was keeping an eagle eye out for anything of mine that might have made an appearance in a manufacturers collection. It’s mainly crown knock offs but my three strand beaded strap has become a regular over the years in a number of UK collections, at least one very big US company’s collection & not surprisingly also appears on a dress on my stalker’s website. I personally have little time for veils & can count the number I have liked on the fingers of one hand but a variation of one that featured on a tv show once, that I really liked, was at the show so I surprised myself & snapped that up in a soft gold shade, plus a 126cm long ivory veil covered in crystals for clients who want a sophisticated & tasteful shower of bling cascading down their backs. I also scored on the shoe front & ordered a gorgeous style in shades to match Elizabeth, Damsel & Ice Queen (gold, red & winter white). Those should be with me in the next few weeks & the jury’s out yet on whether I’ll show those on the site or hold them back as exclusives for my gown clients.

My favorite bit, apart from  two suppers at Bettys tea shop – a must indulgence when in Harrogate or York, was, as it happens, my brief but pleasure giving cruise past the Ian Stuart stand.

Ian it seems is loved by the legions of bridal shop ladies – a Robbie Williams of the bridal manufacturing world. He looks the part, has a slick ad campaign & puts on a good show. He is the winner of at least 3 years of Bridal Buyer’s British Bridal Designer of the Year award which one would be forgiven for thinking was won as a designer in competition with all UK designers but you’d be wrong.

 

Here's the criteria for this award:  "Best British Bridal Designer" Retailer or self-nominated Judged by a panel of retailers and a member of the bridal press. Judges will be looking for someone who leads the way and pushes the boundaries in design terms as well as being an ambassador for British bridal design. In addition, judges will be looking for evidence of a willingness to be flexible, and to work alongside stockists to promote sales." Used, without a clear clarification of what the award means, it sounds like he’s been judged to the best bridal designer in the country which, of course, is a load of tosh, as are the ones awarded by magazines & wedding shows over the years with similar titles that were awarded to a small number of advertisers or exhibitors at their event – the exhibition Yorkshire Brides has such an award, as did a magazine called Bride & Groom years ago (a marketing tool designed to encourage advertisers to spend their money with them with a lure of an award over competitors). We did used to have a British Bridal Designer Of The Year award, which was open to couture designers & manufactures who were judged separately, with categories for different design styles. It was hosted by one of the magazines, was fairly costly to enter & it was the opinion of many that you did not stand any chance of winning unless you had invested a healthy advertising budget in the title. Alas these competitions are never what they seem, just like I know of a couture label that alludes to the fact that the designers are Oscar winners, when the not so impressive truth is that they have, as costume makers, made costumes for films, who’s Costume Designers won Oscars. My friend & I could set up the C&D 'British Bridal Designer & All Round Fabulous Individual Award' & take it in turns to carry the title every other year & who could argue?

 

 

With certain manufacturers not all shops are in good enough locations to be allowed to stock their dresses & my friend & I know one shop owner who ‘dresses up’ to visit Ian’s stand in the hope of persuading him to let them have the collection. We had visions of her turning up on the stand with her colleagues as an updated version of Grease’s ‘Pink Ladies’, wearing sugar pink t-shirts with ‘I heart Ian’ emblazoned across their chests in glitter but it turns out ‘impressing’ Ian involved slipping in to a designer suit & having a good pair of shoes & matching bag - did I say ‘impress’ or ‘depress’? Ooh look, a bridal shop owner in a suit, that’s a novelty!

Well, anyhoo, Ian has been using the same pouty/sulky model for his “straw play” adverts who appears to be trying to pull off the tongue in cheek message of each image complete with naked (hide the naughty bits) or semi naked man where she portrays one of three looks, the ‘I’m thinking of having him’, ‘we’re in the moment’ or ‘I just had him’ – sometimes she seems to pull it off & sometimes she looks p****d off. Moving on with the story…… in Bridal Buyer I had noticed an image of said model that is the very image of Grace from this year’s Big Brother. You know the one who bitched, was a sore looser, was booed out of the house twice & was generally loathed by a large proportion of the British public, you know “Horse Face Grace”. In this pic of a dress I now know is called ‘Gina’ the Grace looky likey is pulling the ‘who does that girl think she is pawing my Mikey’ scowl! When I saw it, it did cross my mind that having a model that looks a lot like a particularly odious & hated member of the British public could damage your campaign. You know, you’re looking at the photo & you’re thinking there’s something about it I just don’t like, just like my Mother cannot abide Danny Devito because he looks like our deeply unpleasant neighbor.

Well, as we start to make our may through the rock concert crowd that has blocked off the aisle to watch Ian’s fashion show.....

 

Imagine a wide exhibition stand, running along a wall, in front of which is an average sized aisle. Now imagine the stand is set up like a stage with each side blocked off like the wings & a corridor linking the wings at the back, so models walk across the stage & quick change behind. Then imagine that to stop & see the show everyone has to stand sideways on, in the aisle. Which creates an annoying bottle neck & is sure to irritate your neighbors whose potential buyers have to battle their way through the crowd to get to them or will dash past such a stand's immediate neighbors because they're finally free & want to press on. Most exhibitors who have fashion shows take central stands & have enough room for everyone who wants to watch to get in to their stand & clear the aisle. Hence not having an adverse effect on other exhibitors. One has to remember, to the average bridal shop owner, gimmicky fashion shows & all the pomp & ceremony these guys put on, is probably the highlight of their year. It may not be London, Paris or Milan fashion Week but they're never going to go to those, so it might as well be. .... (Ian hanging back enjoying the admiration), I glance up at the same photo of ‘Gina' - a cropped in version of this image:   http://www.fashion-agentur.info/sites/ian_stuart/ian_stuart_09.htm     & remarked to my friend “see, she looks just like Grace from Big Brother” & added “kiss of death” just as a girl, I’ll assume was part of his entourage, breezes past, makes it another five paces before processing my comment & spinning around, her mouth open & a ‘deer caught in the headlights’ expression on her face. After a prolonged stare she darted to the front & centre of the crowd & relaying, presumably my comment, to another woman they both preceded to take a good look at us, then at the huge ‘Gracey (pronounced with Manchurian accent)’ photo flanking their stand (& BTW their ad in the BBEH brochure) before more alarmed looks, stares & scowls (if looks could kill), ushering Ian over to relay the comment again, before more starring ensued! Priceless! My off the cuff comment to a friend had caused this very literal enactment of ‘putting the cat amongst the pigeons’ to play out in from of our very eyes!

Rather than thank me or acknowledge my inadvertent public service to their brand, which if acted on, might help sales; as we continued to cruise through the crowd, who were unaware of the mini-drama playing out, we were met with more stares & dirty looks that, lets face it, were plain rude (hey don’t shoot the messenger or look at me like I’m Grace - after all they chose her & if they didn’t have their heads so far up their owns a**es that they didn’t clock this unfortunate coincidence when Grace hit the newspapers in the Summer, that’s their own fault, ‘grace’ is something they could do with). As we cleared the crowd, we cracked smiles that quickly turned into giggles & my friend says, “it was soooo worth coming, just for that!”. “Yeh, it was, wasn’t it”, I said. My friend also remarked that the girl who passed us, you could see it on her face, she knew exactly what I meant.

 

That evening in