Maggie Sottero Trunk Show - Fall 2007 Collection

For those of you who are still looking for your wedding gown, you'll want to try and make it for the Maggie Sottero Trunk Show. Now this will be the very last trunk show of the season that will be held in the GTA. So it's your final chance to see one of the largest collection of Maggie Sottero's Fall 2007 collection in one place. If you have not been to a Trunk Show before, it's essentially a chance for you to see a large collection of the designer's new collection. These dresses are borrowed samples that the retailers showcase, typically for just 4 days or so. The trunk show officially starts on September 6, 2007 but sometimes we may get it earlier. If we do, I'll post it on the blog here. For those of you who just can't wait and would like a preview of what dresses we will be getting on top of our own Fall 2007 collection (see the article below for images), here are the images of the Trunk Show dresses. Keep in mind, Maggie dresses is all about the fit so you really have to try it on to know if it's the one. Almost forgot, it will likely be very busy since there would be no GST & PST during the show. So we recommend you call ahead to book an appointment if you plan to come in on Thursday evening or the weekend. Our store number is 905-566-9632.

New Fall 2007 Maggie Sottero Wedding Dresses

We are still a couple of weeks from updating our dress database . . . sorry. So we thought we post the pictures of some of our new Fall 2007 collection, starting with Maggie Sottero. Her new line has been extremely well received but typical of Maggie Sottero dresses the pictures do not do them justice. You can only appreciate Maggie's renown "fit" if you try it on. Anyway, here they are . . .

Dirty Little Secret

We were just at one of our our bridal vendors the other day discussing the difficulty of getting customers, who order their dresses way in advance, to pick up in a timely manner when he suggested the solution that we delay ordering the dress like many other retailers. Sounds shocking doesn't it? So here's what he's suggesting, a bride orders a dress in let's say June for a wedding in July of next year, the store holds the order until January so the dress can arrive in-store around May to June. So now, it's 4 to 8 weeks before the wedding, the bride is definitely very eager to come in to pickup.

Now this solution may well be OK if everything goes smoothly. The problems comes when something goes wrong. One of the inherent problems with special order dresses is that there are no inventory readily available to replace defective dresses, damage dresses, or misorders. So even if a vendor ships 9.5 dresses out of 10 flawlessly, if you happen to be that lucky .5 bride, well, they'll correct the problem but it will take another 2 to 5 months depending on the vendor, the style, production schedule, etc. So back to the scenarios where you're only a month away from the wedding and something goes wrong. Even if the vendor and the retailer wants to correct the problem, they may not be able to due to lead time requirements. The other potential risk with this approach is that by the time January rolls around, that dress you picked back in June may be discontinued. And the other potential risk is quite simply, too much time has elapsed and the store simply forgets to order it since most of them are not computerlized.

So this is the dirty little secret of many (more than you think) bridal retailers out there. So be careful when someone tells you it takes a year to get your dress or yes they can store the dress for you until your wedding free of charge and don't worry about the balance until then. Chances are, this is what they're doing. It takes approximately 4 to 6 months to order a bridal dress but we always recommend that you double that time so that if something were to go wrong, there's still time to correct it.

Our mandate here at Bridal & Beyond is to process all ready orders within 5 to 10 business days (less for rush orders). We also now offer online tracking of your order so you can check and make sure your order is processed, processed correctly, confirmed by the vendor with an estimated ship date, and see when the dress is received. So when and wherever you order your dress, make sure you understand how they will be processing your order. It can save you a lot of grief down the road.

We Won Again! 3 Years in a Row!

We've been chasing Mississauga News to find out who the winners were for the Brides' Choice Award for some time now. They finally got back to us and gave us the good news. We won again for the 3rd year in a row (click on the table to the right to read it). Since the inception of the award in 2005, Bridal & Beyond has climbed from Gold to Platinum in 2006 and maintained the position in 2007.

Earlier this year we also found out that we won the Consumer Choice Awards for best bridal store in the GTA. Another great honour! These awards are particularly meaninful to us because the results were based on votes from real brides like yourself. We want to extend a great big thanks to all those brides who voted for us. We promise to not only maintain those standards but to improve on them. Thanks Again!

New Jim Hjelm Occasions Bridesmaid Dresses

We just received a shipment of the new Fall 2007 Occasions bridesmaids dresses. These dresses aren't set up in the system yet but here's a sneak

preview.

First Blog

This is Bridal & Beyond's first blog entry. We are very excited to add this new feature and hope you will check back frequently for new postings that can help you plan your wedding planning or save a few bucks. For those of you who were on our site a month or more ago, we hope you like our new look and all the new features that have been added. Even more great new features, tools, articles, products will be added over the next few months so check back frequently.

Now this just would not be a proper first bridal blog posting without a wedding dress pic. So here it is, one of our new Paloma Blanca bridal dresses that we just received for the the Fall 2007 collection. Our dress database will be updated in the next couple of weeks to include our new fall lineup.