Planning the stress out of your wedding.

I'm sure everyone has heard the old sayings:  "A stitch in time saves nine." -Dr. Thomas Fuller,  "A ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure."― Benjamin Franklin  “By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.”  ― Benjamin Franklin “Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.”  ― Abraham Lincoln

Having Forty Three years working with brides one might think that I have seen it all.  I wouldn't say that because as soon as I do I will become witness to something I never hoped to see.  I will say that I have seen a lot, have learned a lot and understand much.

This last year has been a year like no other in this industry.  We saw multiple factories and designer houses close their doors.  We saw factories lose half of their employees to higher paying jobs.  We saw orders being placed, frequently, with less than our suggested nine months before the wedding.  I hear you:  "When did the professionally suggested order time go from six to nine months?"  For us the change came nearly 20 years ago when there was an embargo and our gowns were sitting in cargo boxes out on the shores of California.  That same year U.P.S. went on strike and nothing was being delivered easily.   We were fortunate and blessed:  none of our clients were affected.

Needing to be proactive and have multiple solutions we decide that it would be in the best interests of our clients to change the recommended order time from 6 to 9 months.  That change has taught us several things.

1. That ordering 9 months before the wedding: brings the merchandise in well before it is needed with comfortably abundant time to perform alterations.  
2. That a goal of having the gowns aisle ready 30 days before the wedding is a huge stress reliever.
3. That gowns arriving within 6 weeks of the wedding almost always feels stressful.  
4. Three months in wedding time flys by quickly.
5. Ordering 9 months before the wedding seems to defy Murphy's Law.
6. Ordering 9 months before the wedding allows enough time to place a whole new order if necessary.

We understand that a lot of mainstream advice still tells you to order six months before the wedding.  We suggest that that advice is a large part of an equation that equals stress.