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Finding the RIGHT dress….for all the ladies!

There are days when I really love my job (almost every day – but no one bats 1000!). I love it most when I can tell I’ve really helped a fab bride get the dresses of her dreams (and relatively hassle-free). Brides tell us all of the time that the bridesmaids’ dresses are one of the most stressful parts of their wedding planning process. You’re considering so many different people; their likes and dislike, and not to mention their different body types.
Last week I had a gorgeous bride come in looking for a long dress that would suit all 8 of her bridesmaids. 
No small task! She was lucky in one aspect; most of her bridesmaids are around the same size (give or take a size or two) which is very rare! She was looking for a young, fun dress that wouldn’t break the bank and that came in a really deep purple. After an hour of pouring over color books and trying on dresses we came across a winner. It was a unique mermaid gown with lots of rouching and a sweetheart top, and it came in a concord color that was darker than all of our other designers’ purples. Plus, the price was amazing for a long dress! Another happy Flair bride!
What can you take away from this success story? Know what your priorities are! For this bride it ended up being the color. Most designers have an eggplant purple that is dark, but she was looking for that one shade darker. Knowing the colors of our designers as well as I do I was able to direct her to the Dessy Collection and their gorgeous concord colored satin. It can be overwhelming to try and find everything you’re looking for in 1 dress so know what’s most important to you (color, style, price, etc.) and go from there!
Cheers!
Lindsay 😉

Success Story!

Sometimes we are given impossible tasks. “Dress 8 bridesmaids, in all different styles…oh and they all have different body types and quirks (as we all do!)…and make them feel comfortable and beautiful…and do it in one hour!

FLAIR to the the rescue!
Although, we never suggest that you bring in all nine bridesmaids at once because we do have a rather small space, every once in a while it happens, and sometimes, somehow, we are able to get the impossible accomplished!!

This was our task a few Saturdays ago when an amazing bride and her bridesmaids who had done their homework came into the store!

The whole gaggle of girls came into the store ready to get the show on the road!
They knew exactly what they wanted and they had done tons of searching online(so smart)!
Anna Elyse was their designer of choice, the bride had chosen to dress them all in Phantom Dupioni! 

The tough part was that they each had to choose a different dress and get it all completed in one hour! Luckily we had reserved both fitting rooms for this fantastic bridal party and each girl had already gone online and picked two of her favorite dresses. Along with Flair’s consultants, each girl was able to choose a top & bottom that they felt comfortable in and thought would flatter their figure!!  And we even got measurements done!



This demonstrates that if you come to appointments with great ideas and/or decisions already made, not only do you make this process easy for you, but also you can actually enjoy the process and have fun with it!  

I cannot wait to see the gorgeous dresses each girl picked out for themselves.  So, don’t forget to do your homework before an appointment because it is great to have an idea in your head of what you would like your lovely ladies to look like on your BIG day.  Don’t worry we will be there to help you along the way!

Stay warm!
XOXO
Stace

And we’re off!

I don’t know about you, but 2011 started off with a bang for us here at Flair! It felt like the starting gun went off at the beginning of a huge race, with the finish line being all of your 2011 wedding dates. As soon as the calendar switched over to the new decade, our phone has been ringing off the hook with brides calling to schedule an appointment to come in and look for both bridal gowns and bridesmaids’ dresses. Now that 2011 brides can officially say “I’m getting married THIS year” they are starting to panic and want to get their bridesmaids’ dresses and bridal gowns squared away ASAP (understandably). 
Here’s the problem: we want to help ALL of you but it’s hard to fit all of you into our schedule. Evening appointments during the week and weekend appointments are a rare commodity these days and are booking about three weeks in advance. Crazy!
So here’s today’s lesson, Flair friends. Call us ASAP to make your appointment and have a few days in mind that we can look into for you. That will give you the most chances for success this busy season. We hate turning anybody away because we’re so looking forward to working with as many of you as we can this year!
Happy 2011 brides!
Lindsay

Advice from our newest Flair Employee!!

I have always been obsessed with weddings. No hyperbole here, I really do mean obnoxiously, offensively obsessed. I am that girl. And if you were looking for clarification, I’m neither engaged nor married. So, when I stumbled upon a job opening at Flair, I jumped and I have been in love life ever since: half cheesy, half true. Despite being a full time student, an almost full time employee (I plea guilty to the constantly-connected iPhone pandemic) and an occasional sleeper, I wouldn’t change anything. I get to work with two lovely ladies and scads of beautiful brides.
Now, with countless number of appointments under my belt, here are a few things I’ve learned about how to get the most out of your bridesmaid and bridal shopping experience:
1. The more may not be the merrier:
I completely understand wanting to have a fun filled girls day of trying on dresses and exchanging gossip, but six girls equals six opinions, and that can be difficult. Expect to go to more than one appointment—save the first one for you and a close friend or two while inviting everyone to the second one to reveal the final choice! This will help you focus on what you really want for your wedding, at the same time as allowing all of your bridesmaids to have some say in the process.
2. Don’t knock it until you try it:
Let’s be honest, how many times have we heard a sales person swear that something will look better on the body than it does on the hanger? Well, I hate to break it to you, but it’s true. Numerous numbers of the dresses in our store look FANTASTIC once on, even though they’re ‘not-so-much’ while hanging. So be open! Understand that it might be easier to find the perfect dress after throwing out a few “no’s”. And who knows? You might just pick the one dress you never thought you’d like.
3. Don’t be afraid to commit:
We know how hard weddings are. This is one of the biggest days of your life, and you deserve for everything to be perfect. But at some point, you will have to make a decision. Of course, there are thousands of dresses out there and you could spend forever trying on every single one of them, but for sanity’s sake, let the one be THE ONE
Remember, commitment is a beautiful thing.
Until next time,
xo,
Brooke

Tips from a Pro

Many of our brides come in and lament about how choosing bridesmaids’ dresses is one of the hardest decisions they make during their wedding planning process. Now, planning my own wedding, I can definitely see why! You wouldn’t think choosing fun dresses for your girlfriends would be difficult, but it can be. You’re considering the preferences of sometimes very different girls, not to mention different body types. Along the way I’ve come up with a few survival tips to get you and your girls through the process in one piece:
1)   1. Know from the start that you may not make everyone happy: Of course, your goal will be to make everyone happy, but sometimes it honestly just doesn’t happen. With different personalities and fashion senses, it can be very hard to come up with a dress/color that satisfies everyone. Ultimately you have to make yourself happy first and foremost. Don’t forget that it’s your wedding! You’re the one who is going to have the photos plastered all over your house for years to come, so make sure you’re happy with how everyone looks in them. Then, be ready to follow along happily with whatever your friends want when it’s their turn to be the bride!
2)   2. Do not succumb to dress overload: While it’s great to see a variety of dresses before making a decision, when you find one you love STOP LOOKING. There are so many dresses out there; the process could go on forever. The bridesmaids’ dresses affect many decisions to come (what the men will wear, what color flowers you’ll have, etc.) that it’s a nice one to settle down early. It is one of the very first decisions I made, and knowing their colors, formality, etc. helped me with so many other items on the to-do list.
3) 3. Start early: It is never too early to start the order process when it comes to your bridesmaids’ dresses. It can sometimes take weeks to get everyone’s measurements pulled together, and you don’t want to be stressing about coming down to the wire. For example, I gave myself a goal of ordering my bridesmaids’ dresses before Thanksgiving and I gave my girls their marching orders on October 20. This gives them about 4 weeks to get together all of the necessary info. Plus, it never hurts to have the dresses come in early! Then the girls can take their time with any alterations they may need. Paying rush tailoring fees on top of everything is a major bummer that you can easily avoid. 
4  4. Consult the experts: We are here for you! Use us! I can’t count how many times I’ve gotten in touch with my brides to see how they were coming along with their bridesmaids’ dress decision only to find that they were stressing about something for weeks, and something that we could easily help them with. Hard to find color? Want a patterned sash? No question is too big or too small, our job is to help you through this process and we’re more than happy to do so!
So, good luck beautiful brides! We look forward to helping you find the dress of your dreams!
Happy planning!
~Lindsay

Color Me Relieved!!

 Bridesmaids’ dress shopping is a lot like painting your house. You go to the store and they show you these tiny swatches and from that alone you’re supposed to decide what color you want to fill an entire room in your house (or your entire bridal party as the case may be). As Flair’s manager I’ve told hundreds of girls over the years to try and “picture it in their heads” and often couldn’t understand why it was so difficult for them to do so. Now, as a bride myself, I find myself with the same confused look on my face that I’ve seen on so many of my Flair brides in the past. You want me to decide what color my closest friends will wear from a 1 inch swatch? You’re crazy!
Once I got over the shock of finding out that I am not as visually inclined as I once thought, I reminded myself of the facts.  Our store simply does not have the room to carry one dress in every single color that our designers offer. It’s just not possible. So what can we do to make the color decision easier for you (and for me!)? Some of our designers have already answered the call, allowing brides to see the various colors on their websites. For instance, when you click on a particular dress on Dessy and Jenny Yoo’s websites, all of the colors that that dress is available in pop up and you can select the ones you like. It’s genius, and also fun to flip through all of the colors. While the colors do not show 100% true online, they give brides a larger frame of reference. That, combined with our swatches, is a recipe for success!
Anna Elyse has taken it one step further with her new feature, “Create your own bridal party”. Like Jenny Yoo and Dessy, you can click on the various styles and then choose a fabric/color to see it in. Then, you simply add it to your bridal party and move onto the next dress. Once you’re finished and you choose to view your bridal party you can see all of your selected dresses next to each other in your colors. It’s SUCH a great way to really visualize the end product. If you like what you see you can then order swatches right from the website to really bring it all together. From one bride to another, it’s definitely worth checking out!
Good luck Flair friends, we hope to see you soon!

          **Lindsay**

Advice from one of our beloved bridal consultants

As some of you may know, one of our Flair consultants, Leah, recently left Flair to head to the Big Apple.  We love her, as did many of our brides.  She is imparting some bridal wisdom on our fabulous brides to be. 

“Today is my last day at Flair.  I can’t believe believe time has flown by this quickly.  As I sit here enjoying my Boston Cream good bye cake, (Boston – get it?), I can’t help but wish I made some more time to slow down a bit so that everything would not have passed me by in such a whirlwind. 

If I can offer you one main piece of advice before I leave, it is to try to slow things down for yourself.  Enjoy the planning process instead of letting it take you over, and most importantly take a minute at the wedding to look around and be proud of the dream wedding you were able to put together. 

A few bonus tips for you newer brides….

  • Trust your bridal consultant!
  • Allow your consultant to pull styles you may not like on the hanger or had thought you wanted – you never know what will surprise you!
  • Be honest with your consultant if you have another dress you love.  It will help us to make sure that you don’t miss a similar style dress here!
  • Don’t bring all the girls to your first appointment.  Start with just a couple decision makers (Sister?  Maid of Honor?)
  • Have fun shopping with your bridesmaids!  We have fun working with you and we want you to feel the same!

I enjoyed working with you all!
Love,

Leah