The Brides' Project

In the company of their family and friends, our lovely TBP bride Jennifer married her high school sweetheart Nesar in an outdoor ceremony at Edward Gardens this past Saturday, which was thankfully in the morning BEFORE the torrential rains began. Helen officiated, Gail photographed, and there were tears of joy

Congratulations Jennifer and Nesar, we wish you many more years together, in wedded bliss!

Our shop now carries specialty birdcage veils, not just the plain ones, in addition to feather fascinators and all those fun things! You can custom-order them as well — they’re created by Emma, one of our bridal goddesses. Here are four that can be found in the shop currently — the ones you see here are $75.  If you’d like to discuss your desires for a custom headpiece, please email Emma and let her know what you have in mind.  She’s here every Saturday as well if you’d like to drop in and chat with her.

Our lovely client Sandra married her longtime love, Jon, in a gorgeous outdoor ceremony on the grounds of Todmorden Mills and Gallery last Saturday. She wore a dress purchased at The Brides’ Project, had it tailored by our associate Pearl Seto [site], and our in-house photographer Gail [site] was there to capture the day. The trainless dress was floaty and light, perfect for an outdoor summer wedding amidst the trees and rocking out on the dance floor all night.

This photo was taken just before the ceremony, while friends and family were gathering to witness this special occasion.

Sandra, you looked so absolutely radiant you made everyone at the ceremony cry

Okay, the dresses don’t glow in the dark… but there was definitely a glow on my face when I visited OPG’s Nuclear Information Centre yesterday.  Laura, one of our lovely clients, went on a mission and collected gowns for us over the last couple of months.  Through the generosity of her coworkers and others, there were  22 dresses waiting for us!  When we arrived, the entire lobby was filled with gowns of every description, including one that had just been worn 5 days before, and one worn over 50 years ago.

A huge thanks to Laura and her colleagues at OPG, and also to the lovely Catherine Kentridge (wedding officiant) who was kind enough to join me and help me tote them all home!  (upper left pic… Laura, Catherine & myself)

Your wedding is in July and the temperature is soaring… do you really want to wear 20 lbs of dress and beading for 12 hours?

You really don’t have to! This gown is a Size 22, believe it or not (see the ruching? it’s magic!), and will cost you less than renting a limo… of course, if you’re having a destination wedding you won’t need a limo, but you can take this gown and have a garden wedding, a cottage wedding, or even a wedding on the Toronto islands, all without the heavy train or crinolines or corset to weigh you down. Pin a flower in your hair, put on your bling-y sandals, and away you go!

This week I was contacted by the lovely Ayala Beck at Wellspring, and popped in to see one of their facilities here in downtown Toronto.  I have to say that I was enormously impressed, and think this would be a terrific organization for us to support with our fundraising efforts in 2010 and beyond.  I also want to help spread the word about who they are, and what they have to offer.  In short,

Wellspring is an innovative network of centres providing high-quality cancer support, education and coping skills to a growing number of individuals, family members and professional caregivers in Canada. Wellspring programs are free of charge and open to individuals and caregivers who are coping with any type of cancer, at any stage.  They include individual and group support, coping skills, expressive therapies, energy work and educational workshops and presentations and are housed at warm, non-institutional Wellspring centres. You can visit their website at www.wellspring.ca

For those who like having a bit of fun, and don’t mind being in the public eye… Slice Network has a new show called Inlaw Weddings and they’re looking for couples to take part!  One of our clients here had previously taken part in Wedding SOS, and she had a hoot.

Here’s the information… feel free to contact them if you’re interested.

The G20 definitely made things tough for many brides, grooms, limo companies, officiants, photographers, DJ’s and everyone else involved in the industry over the weekend.  WE hope that everyone managed to have a wonderful wedding day nonethless… and pass on our congrats to folks like Pebble, Michael, Vicki, Andra, Tom and the many others who celebrated.

Thanks for inviting us to share in your day… and inviting us to help

Cheers from all the staff on the weekend… Gail, Emma, and Helen.  We look forward to pics to share!!

[Continued from Part 1]

…I didn’t really think much about it after that; I was too busy packing and preparing for a 5-month trip my new husband and I were taking to Europe during the year off we had planned following our wedding. Then, about two weeks into the trip, I received an email from my wedding photographer. It seems that he had gotten an email from a woman who had bought my dress, recognised it from the photos Helen had posted to her blog, and contacted my photographer from the credits. She wanted me to know that someone had “adopted” the dress, which had fit her, as it had me, as though it was made for her. I emailed her back, and so Marianne was able to email me the photos from her wedding that autumn, showcasing the dress once more.

Further, Marianne donated the dress back to the Brides’ Project! True to form, it didn’t stick around long, and was in turn snapped up by Sarah. Sarah emailed Marianne in response to her note; Marianne emailed me, and suddenly the dress had an ongoing legacy! Both Marianne and I are looking forward to seeing the photos of Sarah and of the ongoing adventures of the dress from her summer destination wedding.

In the end, I don’t think I have ever been so satisfied with a clothing purchase as I am with this one, not only because of the fact that I was inspired by the Brides’ Project to seek out a cost-effective, eco-friendly and socially-responsible alternative to the typical wedding-dress experience, but also because thanks to some other like-minded brides, this particular piece of silk and beading now has a history and a personality that I’ve been able to share with two other women. Who knows if a daughter of mine would have wanted something kept stashed in mothballs for decades? Would I have heard back from a buyer on eBay?

I was so enthusiastic about my story that the same sister-in-law, after her own wedding this January, asked me to bring her dress back from Ohio to donate. She even blogged about it on a site she maintains about being a fashion-savvy academic, to mixed responses. To those who said it would just be too much of a wrench to part with their wedding dress, she says, “I’ll always have the photos, and it’s all for a good cause.”

And to that, I definitely say: “Yes.”

Thank you, Jodi, for writing your story and the story of the dress!

Marianne, pictured above, said YES to this dress last autumn and we are looking forward to the third bride who said YES to this dress take her trip down the aisle in the summer.

If you would like to be a guest writer at The Brides’ Project blog or would like to share a story about your dress, let us know!

We have our first in a series of guest writers who has quickly become a TBP legend as far as we’re concerned!

You may remember Jodi from a post in September, when we mentioned that she generously donated her dress to our shop, accompanied by some fab photos from her photographer. Well, little did she know her dress would create not just one or two aisle stories, but several! (Check out the comment from that post for a preview…)

Over to you, Jodi:

I’m lying on the bed in my hotel room, gaping, appalled, at the TV.

It’s the end of the first day of a conference, and the end of my first-ever experience watching Say Yes to the Dress. I have no-one to share my sudden revelation with as I lie there, watching like a rubber-necker at a pile-up on the 401, but that doesn’t prevent me from crying aloud, “Good grief! That’s exactly how I don’t want to shop for my wedding dress!”

It’s ten months yet until my wedding, and, according to all the bridal magazines and websites that I refuse to take for gospel, I’m behind in my wedding-dress shopping. I ought already to have made my appointments at the salons I want to hit, and probably already should have made a scrapbook of inspiration designs torn from 500-page catalogues touting the latest runway trends.

But that’s so not what I want for my wedding dress. For one thing, I haven’t the foggiest idea what kind of dress would look good on me. For another, I just cannot — will not — wrap my head around the idea of spending thousands of dollars on something I will wear just once. I find it hard enough to wrap my head around the images of those women on TV blithely chucking $10k and more at masses of tulle and spangles foisted on them by slick, pushy salespeople, even though it is TV.

I grab my laptop and start searching for alternatives. There are plenty of inexpensive dresses to be found online, but I’ve heard about the sweatshop conditions and long waits involved in the “custom” manufacturing of some of these “cheap” alternatives, and the tackiness of the websites does not reassure me.

I could order someone’s gorgeous vintage dress off eBay… but I can’t imagine buying a gown sight unseen when I couldn’t ever bring myself to buy a bathing suit from a J Crew catalogue back in my university days, when my figure flaws weren’t quite as… er, pronounced as they are today.

And then… I hit upon an article talking about the Brides’ Project. I’m intrigued: not only are the dresses discounted, but many of them are recycled. And I can go to the actual location to try them on. And I won’t be harassed by commission-hungry salespeople. And, to top it all off, the proceeds go to a good cause! I’m hooked. I’ve decided: before I start anywhere else, I start here.

When I get home from my conference, I make a call to set up an appointment. I send out an all-call to my various friends to ask who might be interested in joining me. Turns out my brother’s fiancee will be in town and is up for a fun afternoon of trying on bridal gowns. So off we go.

We arrive and one of the volunteers shows us to a room overflowing with dresses of all varieties. I love that we are free to browse the racks ourselves, instead of trying to describe what I want to someone who will then try to pull out something that matches my very undefined vision from a hidden stash of unseen samples. We dig in and try on all manner of dresses, from satiny halter-top A-lines to clingy beaded sheaths. Halfway through, my fiance’s best friend shows up and, between the three of us, we’re soon gleefully having a ball selecting and trying on dresses. My future sister-in-law even gets to try on the giant tulle ballerina-style gown especially reserved for fun fittings. The experience is about as far away from the stilted, staged “Say Yes” experience that I had so dreaded. Every so often, the volunteer pops her head in the door to see how we’re doing, and I can see by the look on her face that she’s used to the kind of scene she encounters, with one “attendant” flitting about in a princess gown while the other ostentatiously fluffs out the train of the dress I’m currently modelling, all of us with huge grins on our faces.

Stay tuned for ‘Say Yes to THIS Dress (Part 2)’!