The wonderful world of accessories!
With wedding season fast approaching I thought I would focus this blog on bridal accessories. We stock a huge range of finishing touches including shoes, veils, jewellery, headpieces, the list goes on…
Here at Grand Jour we offer a varied range of gorgeous on trend wedding shoes. We stock shoes from Paradox London and Rainbow Club, and we find that they offer very different styles to each other. Whether you are looking for a simple traditional wedding shoe, or more of a statement shoe, we have lots to choose from and we are sure you will find the perfect style to compliment your dress. But the best thing about these shoes is that, not only are they gorgeous, they have been designed for maximum comfort on your special day. Each shoe has padding inside to ensure you’re comfortable through the day and then still able to dance the night away. The Rainbow Club Bliss Comfort collection are like wearing slippers… But with heels!
Whether you’re wanting a traditional cathedral length veil or a shorter veil we have plenty to choose from. We are a little mad on veils and can’t resist new designs when they’re released, so we have so many different styles we sometimes thing we should just be a veil shop!When choosing your veil there are many factors to take into account. The first thing is the style of your wedding dress…. Does the veil add to the look or does it take away from your dress? Secondly you need to think about your wedding style….is the veil giving you the look you were aiming for? For example, if you want your wedding to feel quirky and edgy, then perhaps a cathedral length veil is going to be too traditional for you. These factors can help make choosing a veil much easier. But the most important thing to remember is that your wedding should be what you want it to be so go with what makes you happy 🙂 Ultimately, the right veil for you is the one that makes you feel the most confident and beautiful on your wedding day.
Another decision is whether you are having anything in your hair? Now I personally love tiaras! I’m all for anything sparkly and you don’t get many opportunities in life to wear a tiara! There are, however, many other possibilities… Some brides opt for a sparkly asymmetric side piece, others a small slide in the side or back of their hair, and for a softer look you could choose flowers.
Something else, that brides often forget about until the last minute, is a garter! Are you wearing one under your dress?
In my next blog I will be discussing the old traditions of…..
Something old,
Something new,
Something borrowed,
Something blue,
And a lucky sixpence for your shoe.
We will look at how you can bring these traditions into your wedding day 🙂
Emily xx
That time of year…
Wedding fayre season is upon us! We kick off with Queens Hotel in Cheltenham and GL1 in Gloucester this Sunday 10th January. See you there!
A new addition to our team!
We are delighted to now be using #realbridesrealbeauty wedding photos on our new leaflets and appointment cards.
We are so excited to be able to reveal our new van, which has also been wrapped with real bride images…
Let us know if you see us around! 🙂
Happy New Year!
Firstly, happy new year! There will be lots of very excited brides and grooms who can now say they are getting married THIS YEAR!
Also a big ‘Congratulations!’ to those who were newly engaged over the Christmas and New Year period.
It’s going to be a very exciting few weeks for us in the shop as we will receive lots of our new gorgeous dresses which we are so excited to see brides trying on! We have our dresses arriving from designer Eddy K, who we signed up with in September. We are sure you will love these dresses – they are stunning. Finding your wedding dress should be a really enjoyable experience, one of the best bits of all your wedding planning! We would recommend trying on the different styles available so you can see which suits you best and which you feel most comfortable in. Having an open mind can be a real bonus as quite often a bride falls in love with a dress they wouldn’t have picked out for themself. Quite often ‘the one’ ends up being a dress picked out by one of the team here at Grand Jour!
We look forward to seeing lots of you for fittings over the next few weeks!
2015…
Well what an amazing year!
We moved premises to our beautiful barn conversion, the lovely Sophie joined our team, we had our fab van wrapped with #realbridesrealbeauty wedding photos, were nominated for several awards, held charity events to support Macmillan and the St Peters Shoebox Appeal, took on three new designers, held several designer weekends, met lots of brides and grooms at wedding fayres around the county, and throughout the year we had the privilege of helping so many brides find their dream dress and feel like a princess on their wedding day.
Thank you so much to all our brides and all our friends in the wedding industry for making this such an amazing year, and we hope you all have a wonderful new year xx
Winter Weddings
As Christmas fast approaches we have just a couple more weddings left this year. We thought we would share with you a couple of our previous winter weddings. We just love fur wraps, which not only keep brides and bridesmaids warm, but look gorgeous too!
This week I am going to look into the special touches which can really add the sparkle to a winter themed wedding. If you want a wintery look without a Christmas feel, maybe avoid your typical bright red and gold themes, why not try darker shades like navy or purple and tie in winter berries for a splash of colour. Silver looks beautiful against darker colours, and glistens like a frosty winter morning. This colour scheme then can be incorporated through the wedding in the flowers, bridesmaid’s dresses, venue decoration and table centre pieces.
I have seen the most beautiful winter wedding cake made by the very talented Jennie at Curtis & Co Cakes, which is pictured below.
I think it’s just perfect – it is elegant and grand, but also very in keeping with a sparkling winter themed wedding. I particularly love the individual cakes, you could even personalise these. Curtis & Co Cakes are next door to us in Westend Courtyard, and is run by Jennie who set up the business in 2011. Since then she has been widely recognised for her very talented cake designs, and won the Best Wedding Cake Designer for the South West Region in the 2013 Wedding Industry Awards and then went on to win the National Wedding Industry Awards in 2014.
To contact Jennie or take a look at some of her wonderful designs visit www.curtisandcocakes.co.uk.
We hope you all have a wonderful Christmas!
Autumns here
It’s been a busy time for us this month as so many 2016 brides want to have ordered their wedding dress before they get into the Christmas mayhem! It is so nice to see brides walking out of the shop beaming as they have found their dream dress and now know how they will look for their big day.
Something I’ve been looking into is venue decorations for autumn / winter weddings. As the days can be quite dark and the sun sets early, I think candles and lighting can create a lovely atmosphere. During my research I found some lovely LED light trees which you can hire locally from Kopend Creations for a very reasonable price. I think they will look lovely sat in a venue entrance or at the front of your aisle. Whether it’s a castle, hotel, barn or marquee they would work well and would tie in well with most colours/themes as they are clear lights.
Kopend Creations have a huge selection of finishing touches to enable you to create your dream wedding day. As well as being florists, they also provide balloons, centre pieces, floral arches, decorative milk urns and all sorts of other vintage items.
They even hire out sweet carts, with or without the sweets included. Kopend Creations is run by husband and wife team, Paul and Janice, with help from their daughter Joanne. They have previously supplied many of our brides who have always been impressed with how friendly, helpful and reasonably priced they are.
To contact Kopend Creations or browse just some of the items they have available visit www.kopendcreations.co.uk.
It’s that time of year now where most brides and grooms switch off from wedding planning for a month and think about Christmas, we hope you enjoy the festive season!
P.s check out our window display, all lit up as the nights are drawing in!
Before christmas I had an appointment to get bridesmaids dresses ordered, it was such an exciting time to see my bridesmaids in the dresses and gave me a great idea of how things will look on the day with the bridesmaids dresses and mine together as I was able to put them up against each other and compare. During the bridesmaids appointment the girls tried on lots of different dresses to get an idea of the sort of style we were going for before finding the dress we wanted.
So…make sure you do the following:
1. Research, Research and more Research!
- Check review sites such as Guides for Brides – (there’s lots more out there too!) To read what brides have to say about their experiences with suppliers, the service they offered.
- Check Facebook star ratings and reviews – See what brides have to say about the suppliers you’re looking to use, the chances are some of your friends may well have used the same suppliers and can give you excellent advice.
- Look for a feedback page on their website – Lots of suppliers who are proud of the service they offer will have a page on their website dedicated to what their customers have to say.
- Ask suppliers for reccomendations – Who knows the wedding industry better than those who work in it? Your The wedding co-ordinator at your venue is always a good person to talk to, but depending on who you’ve already set your heart on, a photographer, cake maker or florist will no doubt have some useful advice to give.
- Third party reviews – Have a look online, in magazines and blogs to see what other wedding experts have to say.
Most importantly, enjoy planning your wedding as it’s a really exciting time! By the time you get married, most of your suppliers will feel like friends, not just suppliers.
First things first, welcome to our new website!
We hope you love our new site as much as us, we’ve been working really hard on it along with our website designer Simon over the past couple of months to increase its content and usability.
One of the things we really wanted to add to our new site was a blog (here it is!) and better links with social media (you can now ‘like’ ‘pin’ or ‘tweet’ directly from the images on our site!) it has also been developed to work across any device and so is now fully compatible with iPads, tablets, iPhones and androids.
If you’ve been a regular visitor to our site you may also notice we have also included a page devoted to ‘what our customers say’ in essence this page is dedicated to customer testimonials and feedback. Anyone who has visited our bridal boutique will be sure to understand how important customer service is to us, and so this new page showcases what our amazing brides have to say about us!
The great thing about our new site is it has been designed to develop and grow with us; making it much easier for us to add/change pages. In the coming weeks/months we have some exciting ideas planned – watch this space!
Thank you for taking the time to read our first blog, we hope this will give us the opportunity to share some of the ‘behind the scenes’ workings of our bridal boutique.