Working With a Bridal Stylist for Your Wedding

***Today’s guest post continues our series ‘An Insiders view of planning your wedding’ and is written by guest blogger Kat Minks. Kat is the Owner of Adore Productions LLC Events, Design, Beauty. had has over 14 years experience in weddings and events. She is also Certified Professional in wardrobe & prop styling, makeup artistry, and wedding planning & design. Read below to see what her take is on working with a bridal stylist for your wedding ***

The first step is admitting you need a stylist. 

When you’re looking for the right person to edit your wedding ideas and produce you into a picture perfect image for your wedding you want to look for a few key things. A good stylist has seen and worked with all shapes and sizes and knows what will work but wants to use your personal everyday look to come through as well. It’s nothing to ashamed of that you don’t know everything there is to know about bridal fashion or style in general. Couture bridal can be somewhat it’s own animal and the bridal salon sales industry can be cutthroat. Having a stylist gives you a buffer to keep you from the hard feeling of a sales associate at a bridal boutique.  “I bring clients to salons, or I’ve brought designer gowns to homes of clients as well.  It depends on the situation”.

What does a stylist do? 

Brides think they know what they want until they see what’s out there and become bombarded with too many choices. In every facet of their wedding. What makes dealing with attire even more stressful is brides are dealing with body image insecurities on top of being in the dark about the wedding industry. It makes them wind up in tears often times.

A stylist puts you at ease with knowledge of body types and silhouettes to make the most of your shape. Streamlining is the first thing that I do. Selecting the best parts of all of your ideas to come up with your individual visual style. When you streamline your look becomes effortless

There’s more than the actual wedding to plan your look for. Being that I am an event designer decorator as well, I tie your look into the atmosphere as well. All of the events around a wedding require styling as well too. Presenting your wedding style from the get go. This tells guests what they can expect in the months ahead and eventually the wedding. However, I never want a bride to “show all of her cards at once”. It’s like a wedding style story unfolding as the months of events happen.
I like a little element of surprise to keep the wedding ”wow and push the bride out of her typical choice because everyone only gets one day.

Using a Bridal Stylist for Your Wedding
Image via Adore Productions

Offerings for everyone

One of the top services I offer is a Steam and Style package included with a full-service wedding design package or can be purchased a la carte. The package includes professional steaming of all bridal party’s items on the day of the wedding as well as items like the bride’s veil and groom’s tux. Stitching a fallen off button on a tuxedo and shining the groom’s shoes. The emergency kit included for that package is also a life saver with stain removers, armpit stain protectors, and face shield bag to keep makeup off of dresses when putting them on.

The most important item you’ll ever wear! Is wedding gown

Brides fall into one of two categories mainly.
– Scenario 1: you’re a fashionista. A real glam doll that has been to or in probably a hundred weddings in the last few years. let alone worn some cute and some train wrecks of dresses in those weddings. You are on top of it. You know what you want for your wedding look. You pick up the phone and start ringing bridal salons and asking your married status gf’s about the best bridal salon experiences they’ve had. The day comes and you begin your bridal gown tour extravaganza! The first salon lines up your bridal party and mom on chairs (reminiscent of an episode of “say yes to the dress” )facing a mirror and show you to a stark white dressing room where you are forced to stare at every imperfection while you anxiously await the consultants picks according to your magazine tears or Pinterest pins of gowns you think you want.  With a tap on the door, a sales driven consultant brings back a pile of selections ready for your Spanx clad figure to shimmy into. You try on gown after gown trying to flatter the audience of your friends and family As well as come to a happy medium of what you want and what they want. All of the sudden the glamorousness of shopping for the right dress becomes more than you bargained for because every person in that room suddenly is interjecting their own style on your wedding look.

– Scenario 2: you’re the kind of gal that has a relaxed effortless style but are extremely indecisive when it comes to shopping. Choosing a restaurant on a Friday night is a task big enough, how are you supposed to pick a wedding gown!? A gown that will be flashed in family photos for years to come.

Styling the bridal party and moms
Next to the bride, there is another lady showcased on the wedding day and that’s mothers. As you get older shopping becomes more stressful with body changes and new insecurities on top of the emotion of the wedding day and events around it. Also, moms often find so much is left on their shoulders for rehearsal dinners, engagement parties and sometimes bridal showers as well. Figuring out what to wear and what they look like all of the sudden becomes last on their list much like when their kids were young. I can relate I have young ones myself and hear it from moms of all stages of life. This is where I come in. Give moms equal importance and offer personal shopping options that they can feel confident about and get on with their other to-dos for the wedding.

Bridal party
If I had a dollar for every post I saw on social media regarding a bridal party member being allowed to select their own attire within a color scheme and the bride finally sees the selection and just about disowns them.  The fact is, it’s your day. Yes, you want your ladies to look good but you really do not have the patience or time to be toddling around town with every bridesmaid finding the right cut for each one. Or going over hair and makeup looks as well. Granted a stylist cannot tame a jealous bridesmaid gone rogue that cannot be stopped from dying her hair blue a week before the wedding, but she’s bound to have a stunning dress with the right accessories and a hookup to a good stylist that can reverse it in time for the I do’s. From a bridesmaid perspective, you want to feel good too. I mean you will be in pictures, video and being shot from all angles of everyone’s camera phone. Don’t get caught with your Spanx showing to that cute cousin of the groom! A stylist will accessorize appropriately only enhancing the bride’s look. Your bridesmaids are the bride’s accessories so to speak.

Making it work with everything else
You can wear a ball gown on a beach or a deep red or floral gown instead of white. A stylist makes you the star and an event designer builds the event around you and your style moment.

Using pearls on a cake because of pearl beading on a gown. Or selecting an emerald green wedding gown to bring out a passionate green color in ceremony florals emulating an enchanted forest.  I’m finally seeing brides bring some pomp and circumstance to the everyday wedding and it’s so much fun. I challenge brides to take a little bit of a risk while staying timeless because that’s what your guests come to see!