Are you thinking about a career in wedding fashion? Do you think you might want to become a bridal stylist or work in a wedding dress shop as a bridal consultant? If a job in wedding and bridal fashion interests you, then you're in the right place! This week we are taking a slight detour from our usual wedding planning tips and wedding dress advice posts. Today, we are talking about being a bridal stylist, also known as a bridal consultant for wedding dresses, outfits, and wedding day fashion. Our Wedding Fashion Expert, Nayri, is sharing her go-to tips for being a bridal stylist, as this is a question that she is asked often. Whether you're an existing bridal stylist or want to become one, or are just curious and want to learn more about what it is to be a bridal stylist and help people find the wedding dress or outfit of their dreams, this advice is for you.
Follow along as we discuss our best tips for becoming a bridal fashion stylist and wedding dress consultant, including dressing the part, using your time wisely with clients, and how to be more than just a salesperson. These pieces of advice will be helpful for any bridal consultant who is just starting out, and for those who are seasoned professionals, no matter how long you've been in the industry.
Look the Part
The first tip for being a bridal stylist is to look the part. You want to make sure that every day you go to work, you are truly looking your best. When you look your best, you feel your best. When you dress in something that you feel confident in, that is going to come across in your work and be expressed to your clients when they are shopping for their dream wedding day outfit.
The bridal dress stylists at Lovella wear all-black clothing when they are working in the bridal salon. Black is a classic, timeless look and we want to be consistent throughout our bridal dress store. This helps anyone visiting the store be able to easily identify our bridal stylists.
If you're a bridal stylist and you find a work pant that fits you really well, you might want to purchase duplicates of this item. It will make your working life much easier if you have a sort of uniform for work. You won’t have to think when you are getting ready in the morning because you will have your go-to pieces already ready.
You want to also think about your jewelry as a bridal stylist. Our Wedding Fashion Expert tends to wear a lot of bands as rings on her fingers. In addition to their wedding dress, brides are also shopping for wedding bands. It can be a great topic of conversation when brides see the bands and can even help them figure out what type of wedding band they want to pair with their engagement ring.
We also recommend trying to wear and do things that you know your clients shopping for a wedding dress are going to relate to. At the end of the day, we all tend to gravitate toward people who have similarities to us, whether it's conscious or subconscious, it's just something that naturally happens. We want to find common ground with people, so study your market and study your clients. This is especially helpful if you want to attract a different type of client. You will want to start dressing and styling yourself in a way that is going to attract them to you.
We have a few last tips on your outfits and styling if you want to become a bridal stylist. You won’t want to wear any short skirts or dresses, or anything low cut. In the bridal dress and wedding fashion world, you do a lot of bending down and moving around to fluff wedding dress trains or grab things and keep things tidy. With all of your movement throughout the bridal dress shop and with clients, you don’t want to worry about exposing yourself. You should also not wear leggings. These items are not professional for the bridal and wedding world. We encourage you to keep your fashion as a bridal stylist elegant, classic, and professional. In the end, you are in the world of fashion and styling brides therefore you need to be fashionable yourself and you need to look like a fashion stylist.
Be a Good Listener
To be a great bridal stylist, you have to be a good listener. It's very natural to want to talk a lot, to be personable, and fill in any awkward quiet gaps. But, as a bridal stylist working with clients, these periods of silence can often be helpful. If you are talking the entire time, it means you're not paying attention and you're not listening to your bride or your client. If you keep talking at your bride or client, then you aren’t giving her the opportunity to process and soak things in. Trying on wedding dresses can be an overwhelming process. As the bridal stylist, it will be important for you to give them a quiet minute so that their brain can have a moment to take everything in and make sense of everything going on around them.
As a bridal stylist, you want your brides and clients to talk more than you talk so that you can truly get to know them and understand them. You have to listen so you can pick up on their personality traits and any feedback they have on the wedding gowns or bridal accessories they are trying on. Really knowing your clients will help you find them their dream bridal look and wedding day style.
Be Strategic & Make Good Use of Time
Another piece of advice if you want to be a bridal stylist is to be really strategic in your appointments with brides and clients, and to make the best use of time. This is not only for your benefit but also for your client's benefit. Many bridal stylists get into the bridal and wedding worlds because they envision that it's going to be like playing dress-up all day. However, working in weddings and bridal is a lot more work than people think that it is. A lot of patience is required because you are dealing with so many different families and people, as well as different cultures and traditions when it comes to weddings.
As a bridal stylist, you'll need to be strategic with your time and with your clients during wedding dress shopping appointments. Keep everything in focus. Don't get into a "playing dress-up" routine. If a bride or client doesn't like a wedding dress she's standing in, get her out of it quickly. Sometimes bridal stylists really drag it out and have fun and move slow, but you're not being productive - not for you and not for the client. If the bride or client doesn't love what she has on, get her out of it quickly because she needs to be able to try on as many wedding dresses as possible.
Be efficient and strategic in your wedding dress shopping appointments to make the best use of time for everybody. This is not dress-up and play time; there's a mission and the mission is to find the perfect wedding dress for your bride and client. It is your job to find the most important article of clothing your client is ever going to wear.
It’s Not Just a Sales Job
Being a bridal stylist in a wedding dress shop is not just a sales job. Working in the bridal world is not just about you selling things. It requires heart, soul, love, emotion, and patience. Think of it as more of an advisor position than a sales position. You are advising your brides and your clients on what is best for them on their wedding day.
At Lovella, we like to approach all of our wedding dress shopping appointments with the attitude that we are going to find the bride her dream wedding look. We are going to solve her problem and make her happy so that when she walks out the door, she has a forever memory of how amazing it was shopping for her wedding dress. We don’t approach our clients with the mindset of selling them an item.
If you think getting into bridal fashion and the wedding world is going to be playtime or you think it doesn’t require much knowledge, that is just wrong. Bridal styling and wedding fashion require so much knowledge and it takes time for you to understand your clients and what their needs are and how you're going to best serve them. It also takes time to understand the wedding dress inventory and what the wedding dress designers can and cannot do for each bridal dress or what customization is available for each and every bridal gown style. There are a lot of details that go into this role as a bridal stylist and you are not just in a sales position.
You Can’t Make Everyone Happy
As a bridal stylist, it is important to remember that you can’t make everyone happy. It’s going to happen, you are going to have unhappy brides and clients. There is no way that you're going to be able to serve everyone and make them happy. Understanding this will get easier and will come with experience.
You're going to have clients that are so understanding of various situations that may arise and other clients who are ruthless and do not understand and can say really hurtful and mean things. Unfortunately, that's a hazard of the job as a bridal stylist. For the most part, you will probably have really amazing clients.
At the end of the day, bridal stylists are in the service of customer care and making sure that we are taking care of our clients. We have to know that not every client is made for us, not everybody is going to value what we are putting out there for them.
Reviews
The last bit of advice for bridal stylists that you can't make everyone happy is also true for the review process. Reviews can be a really big deal for all businesses. You will have clients say things about you for various reasons. Some may leave a bad review just because they are looking to gain something from you by manipulating the situation. Sometimes they leave a bad review and it's the truth. Not every appointment is going to go perfectly. We’re only human and mistakes happen and it’s okay.
We don't want you to allow the one review or the one client that's so unhappy with you to affect all your other amazing and happy clients. We know this is hard because we often have a tendency to fixate on the one negative thing when there are ten amazing things right with it. That one negative thing is where we put our focus versus the ten remarkable things that are happening and the ten clients that we made happy.
If you are fixated on the one client that didn't like you or the one that you couldn't make happy, that really affects you and hurts you. You’re going to take that into your next appointments and that isn't fair to the brides that are coming in.
Working as a bridal stylist is in such a specialized industry and it takes such a special person to be in it. Dressing brides in the most important article of clothing they’ll ever wear on their wedding day is a one-of-a-kind experience. It's a really, really big moment in someone's life and so there are a lot of emotions and everything is at an all-time high. There are a lot of things you're going to see with the scope of this job as a bridal stylist that isn't in other industries or in other places.
Video: Advice For Working As A Bridal Stylist
If you are just beginning your work as a bridal stylist or wedding fashion consultant or even if you are a seasoned professional, you won't want to miss this week's advice video featuring all the tips for being a great bridal stylist from our Wedding Fashion Expert.
Bridal Stylist Training
We are so happy that you joined us in this blog post as we share the most common and helpful things about being a bridal stylist. We get asked about being a bridal stylist and what it is like to work in wedding fashion often. We want to share our best tips and advice with anyone just starting out as a bridal stylist.
Our advice is also a beautiful reminder if you are a seasoned professional and you've been in the wedding industry for a long time. It is super easy to go back to old habits and do things in your old ways, but you always want to stay on top of your game when working as a bridal stylist.
One of the most fascinating aspects of this industry is that your clients are always changing. You will never get bored and you will always have to keep learning.
If you want more tips and advice on being a bridal stylist, don't miss our Bridal Stylist Training Course.
About Lovella
If you're shopping for your perfect wedding dress, come visit us at Lovella Bridal in Glendale, CA. We carry wedding dresses in all sizes and styles, including plus-size bridal gowns and a full selection of veils and accessories. Lovella Bridal is the premier, luxury bridal wedding dress shopping boutique located in Los Angeles, California. Lovella features couture, feminine, modern and chic bridal gowns in all sizes from the best wedding dress designers. Schedule an appointment to find the wedding dress of your dreams at Lovella Bridal. We can't wait to help you!
About Wedding Fashion Expert
Our wedding dress shopping tips and advice are from Nayri, Lovella's own, in-house wedding fashion expert. Nayri is truly the expert when it comes to bridal fashion and wedding style. As the Wedding Fashion Expert, Nayri is the top bridal fashion stylist and the best-selling author of the book "I'm Getting Married And I Have Nothing To Wear," the ultimate guide to helping brides find their wedding day style and their perfect wedding dress. You can subscribe to her YouTube channel or listen to her podcast for more helpful and practical advice on wedding dress shopping.
