We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Bea/Laura Wright/Semko. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Bea/Laura below.
Hi Bea/Laura, thanks for joining us today. Getting that first client is always an exciting milestone. Can you talk to us about how you got your first customer who wasn’t a friend, family, or acquaintance?
Any wedding related business is a little tricky to get rolling. Most clients won’t need to book you again and it’s takes a lot of trust to choose someone to help make your once-in-a-lifetime day just right. When we first opened, we were very fortunate to have a small network of friends and family who referred clients to us. It was extremely exciting when we got our first inquiry from someone who had no idea who we were! Her wedding coordinator had done a little research and we were the closest alterations shop to where the bride lived. We hadn’t worked or spoken with that coordinator before, but based on our reviews and website, she felt confident that we would take good care of her bride.
Pretty sure we both giggled hysterically after booking that bride. We just couldn’t believe that about a month after opening that we already had a client trust us based on finding us online.
The bride was extremely sweet and had a gorgeous satin gown that just needed a few tweaks to get it just right on her. Oddly enough as we were chatting with her, it turned out that she actually went to church with a good friend of ours!
It probably took a good 8 months before it felt sort of normal to have clients coming in that we had no prior personal connection to. We’ve worked hard to build up a great referral network with other wedding vendors, bridal boutiques, and former brides, but it’s still the greatest feeling when someone just picks us after doing their own online research.
Bea/Laura, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
Bea learned how to sew in college, accidentally being hired by the theatre costume shop. She quickly fell in love with sewing and being able to see something she created really come to life on a person. She may have spent the rest of her college years in the “cave” (as they affectionately called the costume shop) and after working a few other jobs, decided to try to make a living as a seamstress. She was fortunate to find a master seamstress who was willing to train her in bridal alterations and it didn’t take long before Bea knew that this was the world she wanted to live in. The detail, care, and precision it takes to work on such delicate and important garments is really where Bea thrives.
Laura grew up sewing, her mom is also a talented seamstress and always has a project going. Over the years, she has sewn a little bit of everything. She loves taking different styles and patterns that take a little imagination to see the cohesive look and making them work. When she moved to North Carolina and met Bea, they bonded over their love of sewing and Laura started working with Bea soon after.
In 2021, we took the plunge and opened our own bridal alterations business rather than work as contractors for other shops. We really wanted to create a homey, welcoming environment for our brides. Each of our clients has a unique story, style, and vision for their wedding and we really strive to make each one feel seen and understood. We talk through every aspect of the way a dress fits, anything we can see that will really show off the bride. We ask questions to make sure we’re on track with the bride’s vision and really encourage them to ask questions as well. Most of the clients we have have never had a dress fitted like this before! They usually don’t know the terms or what’s even possible to do to a dress. Communication is so important to us and directly translates to happy clients!
We also want fittings to be a fun experience. It can be really boring just standing still, especially if we have to pin numerous layers to hem. We try to get to know our brides as we work. We ask questions about the wedding planning, pets, life changes, and, of course, about the fiance! We really get invested in their stories. We actually decided toward the end of last year to add a question to our appointment request form asking for a few favorite love songs. We really love music and it tells a lot about a person, so we feel like we sometimes get a sneak peak into the bride’s personality. We’ve taken each of those songs and put them in a playlist (along with some of our team’s favorites as well) and that’s what we play as background music during fittings. It’s so fun when brides perk up hearing a song they love! We’re always looking for little touches like that to make our clients feel like they are important to us.
How did you build your audience on social media?
Social media is so important in the wedding industry! When you are booking a seamstress, you want to SEE that other brides look beautiful, confident, and comfortable in their dresses. We chose to hire a social media/marketing maven. Kelly is a rockstar! She is actually a former bride and when we were ready to start doing social media, we knew she’d do an amazing job for us. At first we focused on contacting friends and family that we had done side jobs for in the previous years. She made a relatively small amount of photos really represent our skills and brand.
One of our biggest challenges was that because we work on wedding dresses, we can’t post pictures of our work until AFTER the wedding! Many of our brides pick up about 3-4 weeks before the wedding, so we have to wait and remember when we’re free to share. And then it’s often another 3-4 weeks after the wedding before brides get their professional photos back. So trying to get content started in the beginning was a struggle. We were so grateful to have plenty of work when we officially opened in January 2022, but most of those ladies were getting married in the spring.
Kelly is great at keeping us organized and coming up with new things to post. For the majority of 2022, she came once a week to take pictures, watch us work, and listen to us interact with brides. She knows more about wedding dresses than she ever thought she would! She would often hear us going over things with brides, giving them tips, having them make sure they could sit and walk easily and suggested doing a series of posts highlighting those things. That really helped generate content before we had a good flow of brides getting married.
Another big part of social media as a wedding vendor is connecting with other vendors. We try to follow venues, photographers, planners, florists, make-up artists, anyone that our brides love working with. It helps to already be familiar with what kind of flooring a venue has, what kind of editing style a photographer has, whether they have a coordinator who will know how to bustle the train or make sure all the layers are pulled down properly. We’ve now been fortunate enough to work regularly with a few other vendors that we met on social media, even doing wedding/vow renewal dresses for a few of them! It’s beyond helpful as well when other vendors are willing to tag us in their posts. Alterations are often left out of a typical vendor list, but our work is in the majority of the wedding photos! If we can all support each other on social media, it helps broaden each other’s audiences and honestly it also just feels great to cheer each other on.
We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.
Really it feels like our whole journey illustrates our resilience! From figuring out where to do fittings, to struggling to find a balanced workload, to working on tight timelines, and just generally being part of a high pressure industry.
When we first opened, we were genuinely panicked that no one would want to drive to the middle of nowhere for a fitting in Laura’s house. We had looked at storefront options or even renting out of a community center, but we had very limited start up capital and simply couldn’t afford to rent a place. Laura’s house is thankfully set up with a pretty private area off the front door that’s separate from the rest of the house, so her family graciously let us take over what used to be their dining room. In little Angier, North Carolina, we were just sure that we’d lose clients in the Raleigh/Durham area because they wouldn’t want to drive that far.
Because we were so nervous, we took just about every bride, bridesmaid, and mom that called, regardless of timeline and what they needed done. We just kept thinking that it could be the last person that booked with us for months, so we’d better take the work! Bea and her husband actually moved next door to Laura within the first few months of opening, so that added another layer of stress. Her husband, friends, and family did almost all the packing, unpacking, cleaning in both houses because Bea, Laura, and our contracted seamstress Kara were working around the clock. Seriously…we were averaging 2-4 hours of sleep every night for those first several months.
We were exhausted. But we were committed to still doing quality work on each garment, so we just pushed through. Looking back, it’s hard to say if that was a huge mistake or just what had to happen. It really helped get our cash flow moving so we could pay Kelly and Kara, buy supplies, and equipment!
One dress had beading all over the lace hem and there are two options to sew a hem like that. By hand or verrrrry slowly on the machine. We decided to try the machine. After breaking a few needles (which wasn’t surprising), but right when we could see the end in sight, the needle hit a bead and both bead and the tip of the needle went….somewhere inside the machine. We called a couple of machine repair stores and they were booked out like a month. So we said yes to another client and used the money to buy another sewing machine.
We have countless stories like that. Life throws you curveballs, Brides throw you curveballs! Sometimes it’s overwhelming, but it’s also one of the most rewarding feelings to watch a woman becoming bridal.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.becomingbridalnc.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/becomingbridalnc/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/becomingbridalnc
Image Credits
1-4. Kelly Zelna 5. Jennifer B. Photography 6. Mystical Rose Photography 7. Emily Prada Photography 8. Zirzow Photography