A Fresh Approach To Find The Perfect Wedding Dress with Sara Threatt

Weddings from the Pros

Episode 68 with Nathan and Sara

Looking for a wedding dress can be exhausting, overwhelming and an emotional roller coaster for some brides. Avoid all these hassles and make it a fun and exciting experience instead with helpful knowledge from Sara Threatt of Madison Carolina Bridal as she shares her perspective and recommendations on finding that perfect wedding dress for you.

See some of the dresses they have at www.MadisonCarolina.com and find her on Instagram too @madisoncarolinabridal.

Check out Nathan’s Wedding Photography Studio

Also Find Angled Light Photography here on Instagram & Facebook!

In This Episode We Cover:

Why researching for the perfect wedding dress is so important and how it fits you during your wedding day.
How emotionally worn out brides cope up with the stress of choosing the right wedding dress.
Why choosing the right person to help you with your wedding dress is the key for a successful outcome.
When it comes to family members or friends joining with the pictorial, it is very important to choose people you are more comfortable to avoid to much pressure.
Why choosing the right dress should be a positive experience for both the couple.

Listen to the Full Podcast Here!

Read the Full Transcription Below!

Here at Angled light photography. We believe marriage is an amazing adventure and your wedding is the jumping off point. We'll explore planning an authentic and meaningful wedding experience as we connect with real life couples and the industry's top professionals, we're here to inspire and encourage you as you begin this journey of a lifetime. Hey couples. How's it going? Thank you so much for joining us again today for another episode of weddings from the Pros. So, I am very, very excited to be sitting across the table from Sara Threatt from Madison Carolina bridal, Madison Carolina bridles here in Greenville south Carolina.

I mean just every couple that I talked to that has a chance to go and work with Madison Carolina bridal to find their dress. Just always just has rave reviews about the experience that they had there. So, I was really excited to have Sarah come on the podcast and have a conversation really about a lot when it comes to finding that perfect dress for you. But maybe some other things will pop into the conversation as well. So Sarah, thank you so much for being here. I can't tell you how much it means to me that you would come and kind of share your experiences and share your knowledge with everybody here on the podcast.

So how you doing? Great! Thanks for having me. I'm excited. Yeah, I'm excited too. That's cool. So Sarah you and I were actually texting deeming on Instagram last night and we were really kind of figuring out what we want to be talking about during this episode and really one of the things that came up that I thought was just really, really fascinating was how can we help couples? How can we help brides approach the wedding dress shopping part of their wedding, Right? It's a massive part of the wedding.

It's huge, right? And I don't know about you, but and of course I've never went dress shopping before, but I mean I will say that whenever I've gone and I had to try on clothes, I hate trying on clothes, like for me, I hate it, right? I'm sure that most women love the experience and they're excited about it, but it can be emotionally exhausting though in a lot of ways. Right? So I'm really excited to have this conversation. I'm excited about how to give couples maybe a fresh approach or a fresh perspective on how they should approach finding the perfect dress for them.

So I'm excited to dive into this. So first, before we even start with all that, please tell us just a little bit about you, tell us about Madison Carolina, how long you've been doing this. Give us a little bit of background on the boutique, a store that you have. So we are in our fifth year of business, we're in technically in Simpsonville and the store is named after my oldest child, Madison Carolina. Super cool. I didn't know the name comes from. So a lot. We get that question a lot because it's a unique name and mainly do bridal, we do some tuxedos and bridesmaids and mother of the bride, but we mainly focus on the bride and we have a variety of price ranges, which is great because we get some brides that are on a really tight budget.

So we've got some things 5 $600 and then we go up to our couture collection, goes up to 1800 there are some dresses we can customize and things like that. But I've been in bridal since I was 18. I worked for a store that used to be here in Greenville when I was in college for a few years and I've just always loved it. So that's kind of biding my time until my kids were old enough. I felt like I could at least talk them into the store and that's awesome.

My bridal dress shop boutique dress shop, like why go into that part? Did you have a love for design? I do. And I designed some of our gowns myself. We have a few gowns in our collection, designed them yourself. I designed some of them myself. So we do have a small collection of our gowns that we can customize as well to a bride but that I've actually designed some of them myself because brides were asking me for certain styles that weren't being made yet. So I made them.

That's incredible. That's super cool. Okay, so what I want to do is I want to dive in, You've had so much experience, it seems like every time I look on instagram, you guys are always looking for some help in the shop because you've got so many people coming through. I know that you've been able to work with a lot of brides, so I'm really excited to pull from your experience on this and you can take this in any direction you want to, I'll follow you okay, Okay, how can couples better prepare for dress shopping and finding that perfect dress for them?

I think now more than ever, that's huge. I think in this time that we're in now, the brides that are planning are more emotional and that's a good thing and a bad thing in a negative way. It's because all we've been through in the last two years and they want to experience every single moment of this planning process and some brides have been waiting a long time to have the big wedding the way they want it and we completely understand that we want every bride that walks in the door to have a great memorable experience, even if you go back up the road and by a different dress, we want them to still remember and look back at these pictures because me personally, still every year, around my anniversary time we dig out all the old pictures and I'm looking back at my bridal gown shopping and not just where I bought my dress, but also, you know the steps leading up to it and those are memories that 15 years later, so I'm going to be married 15 years this year we still reflect on and so I want brides to have that experience with their mom, sisters, friends, whoever it is, it comes with them grandma whether or not they buy a dress from us, but brides more than ever right now are really seeking that because there are so many things I think they feel like they've missed out on the last two years.

So I'm seeing a lot of brides that are trying to pack in too much and they're getting overwhelmed and exhausted, emotionally, physically, mentally and then it's putting a damper on the experience. So I highly recommend that brides put their research in before they shop say, hey, there's X amount of boutiques in my area. But these two, I feel like are my top two that I feel like fit me and make those appointments. And then at the end of those two appointments, if you don't find a dress, then go back to the drawing board and say, okay, well I thought this one might have been in third, let me make an appointment there.

We're seeing more so than ever. Right now, brides just trying to pack in over the course of two or three weekends, five or six appointments and even had brides try to pack in five and one day, I can't imagine how exhausting it's got to be honestly kind of physically right? Like to get undressed to get dressed to have to try on different dresses. But it's also a bit of an emotional roller coaster, right? Like everything that you put on, this is why I don't like trying on things in stores and I've always had a bit of a personal thing with this, but it is a bit of emotional roller coaster when you put something on you.

Like, well I love the way this fits here but it doesn't fit right here. You know, something that you might have been excited about wearing doesn't fit the way you thought it would. And so you face that disappointment. It's like not the one even if you thought it was the one. So I can totally understand that I empathize with that is I guess what I'm trying to say, I empathize with that and it's happening a lot. Especially recently we're seeing brides that are trying to experience everything and make sure they don't miss anything.

Then they get to the end of those appointments and they're confused and they go back and they look at their pictures and they say, okay, I loved this one here and I love this one here and then so they reschedule appointments with us, which is great and we love that. But at the end of the day, we know they've been through an emotional roller coaster. So we try to approach that second appointment even softer than the first because we know, I mean they come in telling us, I'm just, you know, worn out.

We went to all these places, it was crazy, it was good, but it was crazy. And I just remember one time it was probably a year ago that we had a bride come in and she was like four o'clock in the afternoon, 4 30. She was our last appointment of the day and the very first dress she put on, she just sobbed before I ever opened the curtain. It was not good. She proceeded to tell me that this was her fifth appointment of the day and she loved to dress her very first appointment, but she felt like she had all these people come in town and they had all these plans so she wanted to go through with all the appointments and now at the end of the day she's like, I'm miserable, I'm exhausted.

And I said, listen, let's just put back on your clothes and let's do this again next weekend, we can reschedule you if you want to go back to that first store and try that dress on again. Yeah, yeah, You know, that's so interesting. Like she felt like she found the one she found the dress that she just felt content with, right? Like she was happy about, but just because she had kind of planned a day of an experience with her family. That's why she felt like she had to keep going and keep doing this, wow, that's, she didn't want to let them down and then she just literally could not hold back the emotions again, she'd been holding it in all day.

Just that the more tired she got and it just kind of exploded and that's so interesting. So I wonder if maybe a part of this is just maybe communicating with the people that you have come with you up front and just say, hey, so we've got, let's say that you have to shops and you know, you're going to to shops that day, maybe just to communicate with your family or your friends or whoever it is and just say, hey, I'm looking for the dress and when I find it, then maybe we just don't go to the rest, you know, or we won't plan to go to the rest.

Like give them a little bit of that, set the stage of love before them, set the expectation with the people that you're bringing with you to go dress shopping and just let them know that, you know, if we find the one, hey, we're just gonna get drinks and we're gonna go and we're gonna have a nice relaxing day, we won't go and do any more dress shopping. If the first dress is the one that's the one, you know, and I say, be intentional with who you choose to come with you too.

You don't need 10 people. The bigger the group, the harder it is because they just want to keep going for the rest of the day and they want the experience to and sometimes there could be anybody, could be a bridesmaid, it could be an aunt that wants this to keep going and so they may say something negative about your dress because they don't want it to stop and we've seen that a number of times then of course it upsets the bride, but be intentional with who you bring, we recommend keeping the group smaller, we offer large group appointments for the brides that absolutely want that and we want to respect that.

But if you don't have to invite all your bridesmaids and every person in your family, be intent with your small circle of three or four people, mom, grandma, best friend, sister, whoever that are also going to respect and know when you've found your dress. I think that's so wise right to tell people this all the time when it comes to like who you're gonna have in your bridal party or you're gonna have in your wedding party, like find the people who are going to be supportive and who are going to lift you up and those are the people that you should surround yourself with, right, like that's probably the biggest indicator of success is probably the wrong word, but the way you're going to feel about your wedding day and this sounds like it's the exact same thing, right?

Be very thoughtful for who you want to come with you. I would imagine because again, I've never been in this situation, but I would imagine that there's probably some pressure to invite people just because tradition's sake, I don't know because you feel like you should, but in a lot of cases that might not be the best way to go about it. I mean, would you have, you know, I'm just thinking to myself like maybe there is kind of, and I don't, again, I don't know anybody in particular, but if there's maybe a grandmother and the grandmother tends to be kind of negative, right?

You know, do you have a device of what do you say to your grandmother to gently let her know that hey, I, I don't know that I, I love you very much and I want to be a part of the wedding, but I will say it's very rare that grandma has, Mom doesn't have to be grandma sister. It could be anybody right? We've had those moments where unfortunately we've had to be the ones to say something and one particular memory coming to mind from years ago where the bride was just so upset, she was literally throwing the veil off, throwing the sash off and all the stuff.

She walked into the dressing room because um basically told her she looked fat and this is an isolated incident where she asked why she was so upset and I turned around and said something like it was because she wants you to love her dress because there's really not anything else I can say, I don't want to be rude to mom and she knows her daughter better than I do, but at that moment when the bride is in tears because mom doesn't like the dress for whatever reason she had, there's really not a good way, honestly, we just try not to be rude, but I will try to be respectful.

Yeah, I understand. Yeah. And I think really the pillar piece of advice here is just try to be intentional about who you have come with you. If you feel like it could cause some contention or it could be a problem. Maybe just try to figure out either sit down with them and just communicate with them and be upfront and be honest and just say, hey, I really want to, you know, maybe if it's your mom and you're not comfortable, your mom maybe say, hey, I really want this to be an experience that I have my sister or something like that.

You know, like I want this to be, you know, find a kind way to just let them know that for this particular part of the wedding experience, I want to do this on my own or with this particular person or whatever. Just being for myself, at least I've always found that being upfront and being honest and communicating honestly tends to always have the best outcomes. And it's very rare, honestly, it's very rare that it's mom and even grandma, usually a more distant member of the group that feels, you know, more confident piping up.

But we have a lot of brides that there, especially if they're paying for the dress themselves will sometimes come in by themselves and they'll pick address. Have you found that that tends to be a positive experience? Like, yeah, I mean one thing that we've done a lot when that happens or sometimes mom and the bridal coming by themselves and they'll find dress will order it, but if it's one we can order and then we'll do what we like to call a celebration appointment will bring back the friends and the family and we'll do a veil and, and all that stuff and reveal the dress.

But she's already picked it. They know she's picked it. And so they're not gonna say anything negative about it because they know that that's her dress, but she maybe came in with just mom or just by herself or just her best friend and the dress. So that process of being nervous about other people's opinions is usually doesn't have any kind of issue because they know that's her address and there's no change in it. That's awesome. Yeah. So they're just excited. That's a great strategy. That's a great tip.

Yeah, that's that's perfect. Going back to what you said earlier, you were mentioning that you know, you encourage brides to do their research. Maybe pick to what should they be looking for in their research. Like are they looking for the kind of designers that the shop carries? Or are they looking to see if like what is it that they're searching for? What would you suggest they be on the lookout for? Yeah, budget is a big thing. If your budget is you know, $1000 don't go to stores that have stuff that's well over that.

Just because we find that a lot of times they'll see a dress on a mannequin and have to try it on and then that they fall in love with it and it's $2000 or whatever. So budget is important. But also the style of the dress. You know, certain brides are looking for certain styles and some stores don't carry those so you want to make sure that you're not exhausting yourself when the store doesn't have what you're looking for at all. And like I said, Greenville's got so many options that there should be no issue and you're finding at least two places to go.

I just recommend starting with two and then if you don't find something, then go back to the drawing board just because it's easy to get, we call it the white out effect. You're trying too many dresses in one day or in a short period of time, they all start to look the same. So finding the store that fits your style and your, I mean vibe is the word that I think about our atmosphere in our store were super friendly, we're super bubbly, it's fun. But you know, we crack jokes, you know, it's casual and laid back.

Some brides want the, you know, champagne through the whole appointment, which we're not allowed to serve per Simpsonville city rules, but you can bring your own. But we have, you know, non brides do it all the time. They'll call me ahead of time and say, well, Simpsonville told me the loophole is this, if you guys want to bring a bottle and pop it at the end of the appointment. But some brides, that's what they want, they want. Like I shouldn't say we're not sophisticated because we are, but there's certain types of vibes that brides want and we're not always that fit for them and that's okay, So that's so interesting because in my head, I was sitting there thinking, okay, well maybe there's like different shops that carry different kinds of styles of dresses, but I think that a lot of shops tend to be more diverse, right?

Like if you might not know if you want a boho style dress or a more classic, elegant and you know, if you go, does Madison Carolina carry something of both. Yeah, okay, so, so it's not really that what you're talking about is, you know, each shop tends to have its own personality, That's what you're saying, right? Like each boutique store tends to have kind of a personality and it really kind of just comes down to the environment that you want to be in, the environment that resonates more with you. Right?

Right now, if you go to Asheville, you're not going to find ball gown satin, classic style there. So you know, if that's what you want, I wouldn't go to Asheville. Right. But yeah, I would say a good many, we have stores of different sizes in this area. So the smaller ones tend to not have a diverse of a selection. So Be intentional with seeing what they have, make sure you like it. But we are very diverse here in Greenville. You've got a lot of both ends at different stores and so you've got a lot of great choices.

So if you live here, you shouldn't have to leave here, you should be able to find a dress somewhere within 30 minutes of where you live, there's a lot of options, which is great. That's awesome. Talk to me just a little bit. Do you see a lot of brides who tend to, and this is my on curiosity, do you tend to see a lot of brides who come in and they've kind of got the Instagram photo and they're like, this is the dress I want? Do they end up finding not that dress, but do they kind of end up with a dress of the similar or do you see a lot of brides that don't end up with what they thought they were going to end up with?

If they walk in with one particular picture that they've seen us post on instagram nine times out of 10, that's what they that's what they end up going with. Okay but if it's just a general, I think this is my style but I've never tried on before, 50% of the time they changed their mind, they go with something else. We always say when you come in we'll pick five dresses to start because we don't want you to get overwhelmed and then once you say oh I like this style will pick more.

Well usually always throw in one wild card if you're trying on all boho we might throw in a satin ball gown. And it is funny how many times we end up now putting on satin after that because they just can't believe that they feel like a bride in that satin ball gown. So now we have to shift gears, it happens a good bit of the time, I would say no more than half the time but sure it happens but usually they bring in a specific picture, they've been thinking and dreaming about the dress, you know nine times out of 10, that's the dress or something Very, very close to that?

Gotcha. Yeah, It's so funny because I'm sitting here thinking like, I think that that's a great piece of advice for any bride, no matter where you are in the country, if you happen to go somewhere, just try on something that may be a little crazy, right? Maybe out in left field, a wild card. Like you put it like, say for fun, just for fun. You don't have to love it. You're not to be mad at you if you hate it. But then it's so funny when they're like, oh my gosh, I actually kind of love that.

That's cool. So talk to me a little bit about, you know, the different kind of stuff. It's so funny. I think that probably one of the coolest things about wedding dresses is photographed a lot of them and I've been to a lot of weddings and usually, and this has almost nine times out of 10, the dress always seems to fit the personality of the bride, right? Like it's like, yes, that makes total sense. Like, this dress was made for her. So I guess I'm just kind of curious like, do you have any tips or suggestions for bride?

Because I would assume that many, probably walk in with a bit of an idea. But do you have, you know, if if there is a bright out there who's just like, I don't know, like, I don't know what I would like to be seen in on my wedding day, How do they start that process of discovery? Is it really just as simple as walking into a Madison Carolina bridal and having a little bit of just trying on some things just to kind of get a feel. Or do you have any other suggestions what we usually do And at our store we let you pick your dresses or we allow you to actually some stores have what they call closed stock, to where you tell them what you want and they go pull it okay.

We are kind of the opposite. We feel like nobody knows you better than you and something about that dress is going to spark your curiosity. So we always say if, if it intrigues you, let's try it because you never know, even if you thought you wanted to fit address and this is an a line. But you just something about it you love. So if you have no idea, we'll say, well let's pick a few different styles, but we'll walk around with you through your sizes and we'll make sure we're getting a little bit of both.

But we'll have you pick what, you know intrigues you and then we'll start there and then then we can hone in on what your loving just based off a little combo platter of opening dresses to figure out kind of what direction you you're going in. That's cool. You know, it's funny. I I've always kind of thought to myself that the dress that a bride chooses is often a statement, right? Like it's a bit of a statement in the way that it's sending a message to everybody, all of her friends, all of her family, everybody that she chose to be there at that wedding with her.

It's a bit of a statement of who she is and what her personality is. And I think that that's really, really cool. One of my favorite things of weddings is to see what kind of dress the bride chose to wear, because that's probably one of the biggest choices as far as like what you put on your body, that's one of the biggest choices that, you know, most women will make in their entire like, top three, I always say top three is address being you photographer because to me those are sort of kind of the three most important things and I always say don't skimp on the photographer and videographer because 20 years from now, that's all you got.

That's all you got. Yeah, and just like you said, you even go back now and you're still once a year. Yeah, that's really cool. That's so cool. Talk to me just a little bit because I think one of the questions that it just seems like, so we're at, you know, we do these weddings festivals and we always get questions when we do these vendor panels of like how do alterations work? Like that seems to be one of the biggest questions that tends to come up all the time.

Can you kind of just take us through? Like if let's say that a bride finds a dress, she loves it, but there's just a few places where it doesn't fit right, like how did the alterations process work? How long does that take? So I always tell brides don't be freaked out if the dress doesn't fit you perfectly because it's very rare that it ever does and what it does, let's just bag it up, send it out the door with you now because it just doesn't happen very often.

It all depends on the dress and the seamstress. But typically we say it's best to a lot two months for your alterations. About eight weeks during prom season, we recommend a little longer just because most of the wedding gown seamstresses are also the ones that do a lot of prom and pageant as well and prom season is april may. Yeah, april may. So usually starting in March, they get really busy. So while we can definitely get it done for you in time, we don't have an in house seamstress at this time, we're looking for a new one.

If anybody knows the seamstress, ours moved to California like eight months ago and we've not been able to find what we feel like is a competent replacement, but we do have outside alteration shops, we've been using for years and we have all the confidence in the world and typically I say during that March, April time of year, let's plan 8 to 10 weeks just to play it safe. Just add a little extra interesting because of the fact that they're altering these other dresses and some of them are easier than others bridal gowns are the hardest on average.

I think our main outside shop that we refer to said that it takes 12 to 14 hours to alter a wedding dress on average longer if it's a big ball gown with lots of layers. So it's a lot of work to alter a dress and you can't sit there for that long, you got to do it in steps. And so typically you'll have about three on average, three fittings, make sure everything fits perfectly depending on how much you're having done. So you go into the initial fitting, you want to bring your shoes, make sure they've got the length most seamstresses will start from the top down.

So you don't have your shoes yet, they'll at least start altering the top. And then once you have your shoes they'll do to him and the bustle, the bustle all depends on your shoes too, so they can't do anything with the hem line or the bustle to have shoes, that's important. So is the alterations appointment a different appointment, like once you find the dress, do you then come back with the dress to go through that process. Yes. So right now, since we don't have in house seamstress, we give you the information for our recommended seamstresses.

And then if you're out of town we have, you know, a couple in Colombia and charlotte that we recommend and then start bargaining Anderson, we have some good ones. We recommend there to keep you as close to home as possible. So you're not adding a lot to your schedule trying to drive back to Simpsonville to go to one of ours in Simpsonville, but we do refer you out to for that and you call them and make an appointment. But once we hopefully get another in house seamstress, you can come to us at that point.

If that happens anytime soon. That's cool. I would imagine that a lot of couples who are listening to this are probably surprised or a lot of brides are surprised at how long that alterations process takes. Right. When do you suggest that? I mean probably as soon as possible. Right. But I mean like what's like kind of the deadline? Like let's say that their wedding is, I'm just going through October 1st. Like when do they need to have that dress? And like what's the timeline here? We've got some appointments left on Friday and Saturday now, it all depends on what you believe you're going to want?

We have our big off the rack selection. So you can pick something we can take home the same day. But if we're special ordering address, they're taking six months. We have one designer that's taking 8 to 9. And so we're currently not even taking orders for them. We'll sell our sample off the rack. But unless you have at least a year before your wedding, I won't even take an order on it because I don't want to run the risk of anything cutting too close. So that's just one designer and it's not even when we sell a lot of, so that's okay.

Most of our designers are doing rushes again, but they're not doing them in the short of timeline, they used to be. So instead of Dresses, I could get in 10 or 12 weeks on rush. It's like 16 weeks. Is that a Covid issue? Is that it is partially Covid issue and also the shipping issues that we've been having for the last few months. But it's part of that because a lot of these factories that make the dresses they are trying to be safe to, whereas maybe there used to be 20 people in a room at one time.

They're only gonna have 10. Okay, cool. So trying to keep people spaced apart still and because you're in, you're sitting in, you know a room sewing. Yeah. So, I mean, it sounds to me like you're suggesting, I mean a year is ideal. If you want to order your dress, I highly recommend at least a year. That way you're not stressed. I find that the brides that we still can get it in time are the ones that are constantly checking in just because they are nervous and I don't mind taking a minute to look it up and see where we are in production or hang up and call for you and just double check, make sure we're all on time.

I'd rather do that and you'll be biting your nails off worried about it. But I do recommend if you are a year out to maybe even 15 months out you can go ahead and start now doesn't mean you have to make a decision but that way you know you know what you want to start your research. Make me make an appointment or two and you got an address. Great if you don't that just gives you that much more time to go back to the drawing board and make a couple more appointments.

Start over again. How many brides do you see that do order special that is at 50 50 years. More than 50 now we do far more than that now than we've ever done before which is fantastic. We started out as off the rack only and we started adding special order just so we could get in some more of these styles brides were wanting but I just bought samples to solve the rack. Brides, Brides want a brand new dress for them and I don't blame them. I wanted a special order dress.

I would say we probably last year sold about 350 dresses, about 200 of them were special orders. Okay, cool. And this is purely my ignorance. But I'm interested to learn when you say off the rack. I mean that's obviously dresses that you have there that's on the rack. I'm guessing when you say bride wants something special, I want something different. I totally understand. I could get that. The stuff that's on the rack. Does that tend to be kind of a mass produced dresses that there's more behind the scenes of that, how that works in our off the rack dress is we buy those from all the big designers allure, Justin, alexander, Maggie cetera, the ones you see in a lot of the boutiques all over the country.

They're not necessarily, I mean they are mass produced in every large city at least has one or two stores carry them. But they're the justice continue dresses. We don't keep anything that's been discontinued more than two years. Once it kind of hits that point, we clearance it out just because we want dresses that are in excellent condition on the rack. So sometimes at that point they've been tried on too many times or we don't want to go outside of the style. And so when you come in you're not getting a dress that's been worn in another wedding.

It was not a bride's dress that didn't get married, you know, you don't have to worry about those things. We occasionally get brides that purchase a dress at another store, they have some dress regret, so we will sometimes consign their dress for them, although we're not doing that as much anymore just because it complicates the process, but they may come in and purchase a dress from us and they've got this gorgeous lower dress right here that they bought from another store, whoever they don't know what to do with, so we'll put it in off the rack section and we'll come to an agreed price with them of what to sell it for for them and it helps them not to have to worry about it and have it at home and they can, you know, move on, move forward with their new dress.

That's super cool. Well so thinking from the perspective of a bride who doesn't really know or what the process looks like because we really kinda went over the process, like you kind of detailed what it looks like when you come in, I say don't be afraid to ask the store that you're wanting to go to for me, brides will call or they'll send an email and they'll ask questions and I say no question is stupid and they'll be like, oh I know this seems like a silly question, especially if you've never been married before, you don't know for sure.

So, absolutely. I had a bride yesterday that had several questions. She was getting married where she would need to buy off the rack because we don't have time to order. And she was just kind of freaking out a little bit. She didn't know that until she started calling and making appointments and some places told her because we only special order, we can't help you. So she was freaking out. She's not even from Greenville, She called me from charlotte because she was having a hard time finding places in charlotte that were, had a big selection of all three dresses in her side because she's really small.

She's like a 02 and a lot of the stores just had the bigger sample sizes tens, twelves and she was freaking out a little bit. So I told her, I said, you don't know these things, it's okay that you are so stupid. It's not a stupid question. So I always say call the store, ask your questions, don't be afraid to call and ask because you need that information. You don't know. It's okay. So that's the whole reason we have the podcast is because like, you don't know what you don't know.

And I mean I know that again, I've never been through the process of buying my wife was and she loved the process. Like that was one of her favorite parts of the wedding experience for for us getting married was finding her dress and going through that process with the people that she chose to be there with her. But I don't think about the cake when I was growing up, anything about the cake. I didn't think about the venue, I wanted to get married in church. That's all I knew.

The dress was always what I thought about. I used to clip magazines. I've been in love with bridal since I was a kid in many ways, but that's the one thing that we girls think about. So the dress processes so sacred and so that is why when we do have brides that aren't enjoying it, we hate that for them because this is supposed to be a happy memory. So going back to what we were talking about before with planning, You know, don't over plan. Just pick two places, Pick just a handful of people, you know, who are going to be on your side and we're going to rally behind you and enjoy the experience with you and then come in with an open mind and have fun.

We just want you to have fun at the end of the day. If you're not having fun? We're not doing our job. Right? That's cool. My next question was going to be like, who is the type of bride that comes to Madison Carolina? And it's probably a bride who's looking for an experience where everybody's laid back, you're having a good time. You're having lots and lots of fun that if you're looking for that kind of atmosphere, then it sounds like Madison Carolina's the place for you. Yeah, I think so.

We try to have a good time and we want you to have a good time, even if you go back to that store before us and that's your dress. And we've done that. We've sent brides back before because it's like they keep trying and trying to top that dress and we're like, well you're not going to top it. You clearly love that dress. It was fun. I mean we could try on a few more if you want to, but call that store and go back get that dress.

That dress. Yeah. Yeah. Alright, so before we wrap up, you said earlier, you've been married for 15 years. It'll be 15. This October, congratulations. Yeah. That's awesome. So what's the biggest piece and actually this is something I'm going to want to start asking wedding professionals because I'm always interested in this. But what's probably the biggest piece of marriage advice that you have? My husband and I both will probably say the same thing, but in a different way. Always be honest and not be afraid to tell your spouse how you're feeling about something or thinking about something.

Even if it means yelling at because I know my husband and I over the years we've been trying to, you know, show the kids, oh, you know happy, but sometimes you can't always get your, I tell my daughter, I said sometimes your dad and I yell things at a louder volume nicely. But sometimes if I feel like he's not listening, I'm not listening to him. Sometimes I have to say it at a volume. So the other ones and I guess that we have to yell at our youngest child all the time or he doesn't hear us.

So I guess it's a trait he inherited from one of us. But I always say conflict is not a bad thing, as long as it's done in a respectful way, it's not a bad thing. So don't be afraid to tell your spouse or your fiancée that you don't like something about the wedding, even if it does cause a small conflict because those are the things you're going to work through it, it's gonna make you stronger as a couple. So if we've made it through the last two years of Covid and we're still going strong at 15, I think we probably are doing something right?

Yeah, that's awesome. That's and that's such a great piece of advice Sara. I can't thank you so much. Like I can't Yeah, this is, this is incredible. There was a lot of stuff in here that I've heard you say time and time again, but I'm glad that we can get this in front of lots of other couples to hopefully help, you know, a bride or at least if we can help one bride, I'm happy how to be more intentional when it comes to, you know, choosing their dress and finding the dress of their dreams.

So that's incredible. So Sarah, thank you so much. Where can people find more information about you and Madison Carolina bridal? Yeah. You can go to our Facebook or instagram or our website, Madison Carolina dot com. And we'd love to have any any bride that wants to come see us. We thank you all. We love our brides and we love what we do. And we've got a great core staff that they just love what they do and they want to have fun with you. Yeah. And I got to tell you guys finding the wedding professional who is not only passionate about what they do, but is passionate about serving you and getting to know you and what you want and trying to help you match what you want with what you need. Right?

And that's I think that's the core principle of any great wedding professionals. So I know that Sarah and her team over Madison Carolina doing that. If you guys have any questions, just like she said, do not hesitate to reach out to help in any way I can, they're happy to help in any way they can and definitely go visit them. You know, I would encourage you to make it one of your bright shops, do some research and see what they carry. And again, if the kind of atmosphere that she was talking about, Madison Carolina appeals to you, you definitely need to schedule an appointment and go check them out guys.

Hopefully this has been at least a little bit helpful. Thank you so much for your time and your attention. It means the world to me that you would come here and listen to me blabber and find my way about talking about wedding dresses. It really means the world that you're spending a little bit of time here. And hopefully we gave you a few pieces of advice that's going to help you design a more intentional wedding. Guys, I hope you have a great day, a fantastic year. A stupendous, stupendous month and a fantastical year.

I think that's what I usually say. Anyway, thank you so much. Have a good day here, angle life photography. We believe marriage is an amazing adventure, and your wedding is the jumping off point. We'll explore planning an authentic and meaningful wedding experience as we connect with real life couples and the industry's top professionals. We're here to inspire and encourage you as you begin this journey of a lifetime

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Wedding Photography for intentional couples