First time? Read this. It’s about who I am, how I know something about wedding dresses and the Less Stress Philosophy.
Hello, my beautiful friend! I am delighted that you have found me. My name is Kel and my mission is to make your experience of finding your wedding dress everything it should be: fun, joyous, life affirming and, if I do my work right, an opportunity for you to make a confident statement about the woman that you are and intend to be, rather than what others (and society) think you should be.
Oh, I hear your objections. ‘But I’m plus sized!’ ‘But I’m 5 foot 2!’ ‘But I’m not a bridey bride!’ ‘But I never wear dresses!’ ‘But I’m over 50!’ And the common refrain among all: ‘But I’m utterly terrified!’
I don’t just hear you; I’ve got you, babe. It’s why I’ve created this blog: to help women feel less terrified and more excited about the process of finding their dress.
I use ‘dress’ intentionally here. I advocate that women should wear whatever makes them feel incredible – yes, on their wedding day but more than that: on ANY day. However, my experience as a bridal consultant – and my interest – lies specifically in wedding dresses so I can offer more on those than I can other options. So, to my jumpsuit/pantsuit/other gals: while you will find that lots of the advice here about choosing something to wear for your wedding wholly applies, just make a call about whether you skip the dress-heavy posts.
How do I know about wedding dresses?
Almost immediately upon becoming a bridal consultant I knew I had found my life’s passion. It took a while to get there though. I had a fulfilling and enjoyable career working in universities after doing a PhD in English Literature and Cultural Studies at the University of Melbourne in the late 1990s. But during COVID in 2020 while home schooling two primary-school aged children at the same time as doing my full-time job remotely I became completely obsessed with the TV show Say Yes to the Dress. Randy and Lisa and their gorgeous dresses kept me sane in those dark days of Melbourne’s long lockdown. It was my escape, my solace.
When my family and I moved to our current city shortly after the pandemic ended, I saw an ad for a bridal consultant, applied and, by some miracle (given I had ZERO retail experience of ANY kind) I got the job. It was then my deep love affair, not only with bridal fashion but with the women we see in the salon, began.
As my experience of working with dozens and dozens of brides has grown and my understanding of women and their stories, hopes and dreams has broadened that love has only deepened. If I’m honest, when it comes to working with brides, ‘obsessed’ may not be too strong a word. When I am in the salon I am in flow. When I’m not in the salon I’m counting down the hours until I’m back there again.
It’s such a privilege and a joy to help a woman find the dress she will be married in. And not because it’s the so-called ‘biggest day of her life’ (what about when she graduated, when she left her abusive relationship, when she had her children, when one of her parents died or when she finally recovered from depression and could leave the house again?) but because when I work with a woman to find her dress I know she is trusting me with her long-held dreams, the battles she has/had with her body image throughout her life, and/or the weight of societal pressure of what she ‘should’ look like if she wants to assume the socially approved label of ‘Bride’.
That’s why the owner of the salon where I work took a chance on employing me. Because she knows – like I now know – that working in bridal is SO different to selling just about anything else. It requires care, understanding, empathy, tact, discretion, diplomacy, conflict resolution and, yes, sometimes some tough love and good old fashioned talking-tos.
All of that AND an ability to ‘read’ each unique body and a good eye for what will look great on it.
Who am I?
I have a PhD in gender and queer studies and identify as a feminist. Which ‘should’ (how I hate that word), perhaps, make me anti-bridal and anti-wedding.
At the same time, we are a product of the culture we grow up in and I acknowledge my own pleasure in the fantasy of the bride: the Cinderellas, the Snow Whites, the Auroras; Princess Diana, Kate Middleton and for me personally Paula Yates in her incredible red wedding gown when she married Bob Geldof.
While I don’t want to be an apologist for the patriarchy, another thing that attracts me about weddings more broadly is the ritualistic aspects of them. Unlike most cultures in the world, Western secular culture has few traditions to punctuate our days and mark our life journeys. I like that weddings are something that we can make traditions and memories with our loved-ones out of.
I also came to love fashion very late in life. Overweight since my parents divorced when I was seven, I continued to be so throughout my teens and twenties. Growing up in a small regional town in the 80s and 90s there just weren’t the so-called ‘plus sized’ options for girls back then and so finding something to wear that I didn’t feel like a 60 year-old woman in was so hard. I felt shame and embarrassment as well as a deep hatred for my body that, on a bad day, I still battle today. I was constantly being put on diets that worked initially and then inevitably failed as my compulsive, emotional eating returned each time. The sense of failure and my own utter inadequacy was immense.
I spent my twenties living in all-black outfits and trying to hide the multiple perceived flaws and faults of my body until I lost a lot of weight late in that decade and discovered my latent passion for clothes. Thankfully, these days (parts of) the fashion industry recognise that women shouldn’t have to be thin or young to enjoy clothes and I have gained and lost weight a few times since then (hello babies, chocolate and perimenopause), but I have never lost the love and joy I find in how women can embrace their body and spirit and express themselves through clothing, no matter what their size, age or shape.
The Less Stress Philosophy
While Say Yes to Less Stress is all about finding a wedding dress, as you explore it I encourage you to think about saying yes to less stress where clothes more generally are concerned. My hope for you is that you have more fun and less anxiety with what you wear and how you wear it.
In a nutshell, my philosophy for how to say yes to less stress is as follows:
- It’s ok to want to do ALL the bridey things
- Its ok NOT to want to do ALL bridey the things
- Your dress should make you FEEL amazing – how it looks is important, yet secondary
- It’s YOUR dress (yes, even if someone else is paying for it)
- You deserve to feel amazing on your wedding day (and every day, actually). Yes, YOU do
You’ll find more about each of these and a whole lot more by exploring my posts. Being a bride-to-be is a temporary thing so this blog is designed for you to come, take what you need to support your own Yes Dress journey and then go and apply it! All I ask of you is that if you find anything here helpful, you share it with the other brides-to-be (or women who may need it) in your life.
I hope you enjoy what I have made here: I have truly loved creating it for you.
Say Yes to Less Stress 