Ten­nille Al­leyne

Find­ing the per­fect wed­ding dress for any bride-to-be can be an ex­hil­a­rat­ing yet ex­haust­ing process. Maybe you've al­ways dreamed of be­ing Cin­derel­la at her ball or a clas­sic bride like Kate Mid­dle­ton. Wher­ev­er your imag­i­na­tion takes you, the tricky part is al­ways find­ing that per­fect dress to com­ple­ment it. Twen­ty-six year old Nik­isha Gopee-Boodan, own­er of The Wed­ding Gallery may ac­tu­al­ly help you say yes to the dress! Re­sid­ing in Cunu­pia, Nik­isha pro­vides a bridal cus­tomis­ing ser­vice to brides on a bud­get and al­so does wed­ding plan­ning part time. A nascent busi­ness that start­ed in 2009 as a hob­by has now ma­tured in­to the go-to op­tion for brides want­i­ng to cre­ate their dream dress. This ob­ses­sion with every­thing 'bridal' start­ed a long time ago for Nik­isha. "I al­ways liked go­ing to wed­dings to see what the bride wears and how she match­es and ac­ces­sorizes her dress. I al­ways feel ex­cit­ed and over­whelmed," she said.

Af­ter ac­com­pa­ny­ing her hus­band to Mi­a­mi for a print­ing con­fer­ence, the spark for her own bridal busi­ness ig­nit­ed af­ter see­ing a port­fo­lio of el­e­gant wed­ding in­vi­ta­tions on dis­play. Nik­isha de­cid­ed to team up with her hus­band (who works in the print­ing busi­ness) to pro­duce styl­ish in­vi­ta­tions, un­der their com­pa­ny 'The Wed­ding Gallery'. How­ev­er, af­ter a tough cou­ple of months the idea was quick­ly abort­ed and Nik­isha start­ed to ex­plore oth­er op­tions. "I then won­dered if the mar­ket would open up if I got in­to wed­ding dress­es. I have been to bridal stores all around Trinidad and most de­sign­er dress­es could cost you near­ly $10,000 but no one is go­ing to look at the tag to see what you're wear­ing." I want­ed to have a busi­ness where I could keep the dress­es un­der 5000 which would be prac­ti­cal for those who want to look nice but still keep with­in a rea­son­able bud­get." The idea in­stant­ly took off af­ter Nik­isha ne­go­ti­at­ed a deal with her sup­pli­er in Mi­a­mi and got her first client in Au­gust of 2009. Ac­cord­ing to the bridal spe­cial­ist, choos­ing a dress is fun but the process has to be metic­u­lous. "Most brides al­ready know what they want. Oth­ers may come with their favourite picks so we sit down to go through them."

For Nik­isha there are three main cri­te­ria that must be care­ful­ly con­sid­ered when choos­ing a dress. The first is body type where vol­ume should be min­i­mized on plus sized brides, for ex­am­ple. Sec­ond­ly the type of fab­ric is de­ter­mined by the venue of the event. By na­ture bridal satin is quite heavy, so brides may want to trade in that look for or­gan­za if they are hav­ing the wed­ding out­doors or chif­fon for a beach wed­ding per­haps. Last­ly, for styl­ish brides, the year the de­sign came out may cause you to change your style of dress so that you look a lit­tle more mod­ern on your wed­ding day. This bridal spe­cial­ist said that the trends for 2012 are out­door wed­dings with brides wear­ing coloured dress­es. They are opt­ing for ivory and blush pink dress­es with dra­mat­ic colours such as red and black. Ruf­fle and feath­er ac­cents are al­so trendy. When the bride-to -be fi­nal­ly de­cides on the de­sign, Nik­isha would then take mea­sure­ments. "I help you to cus­tomise the look to your ex­act taste and the or­der is sent to the sup­pli­er to be made.

The bride has to pay 50 per cent down and it takes on av­er­age about six to eight weeks to be sent back de­pend­ing on the bead­ing," she ex­plained. Cus­tomi­sa­tion in­cludes adding sleeves, chang­ing the fab­ric, chang­ing the bead­ing, chang­ing the colour, cus­tomis­ing length of train etc. Mus­lim brides have the op­tion of even hav­ing a match­ing hi­jab made for free. Ac­cord­ing to Nik­isha, the re­spons­es are al­most al­ways pos­i­tive. "Brides are al­ways emo­tion­al and pleased about the fi­nal re­sult. If they are un­hap­py be­cause they have gained or lost weight, I take it for al­ter­ations im­me­di­ate­ly to put the bride's mind at ease," she said. Af­ter com­ing across many ven­dors in the bridal in­dus­try, Nik­isha made a nat­ur­al pro­gres­sion to wed­ding plan­ning but lim­its it to one per month due its time con­sum­ing na­ture. "The chal­lenge is pleas­ing the cus­tomer and some­times they may have un­re­al­is­tic ex­pec­ta­tions of the wed­ding plan­ner. Al­though they are pay­ing you, they like to push the lim­its," she said. Notwith­stand­ing, Nik­isha plans to get in­to the bridal in­dus­try full time in the com­ing years. "In the next ten years I would like to have my own bou­tique where I of­fer high end de­sign­er dress­es but al­so have the cus­tomis­ing op­tions for my cus­tomers."