I’ve decided to start a new series called The Wedding Smashers where I’ll be interviewing some of the ‘best in the business’ for the blog. I’ll be asking them questions about how the’ve carved their prominent places in the wedding industry (as well as how they began) and how they’ve managed to build their soaring businesses to where they are today.

I’m kicking off with wedding dress designer extraordinaire, Stephanie Allin who creates beautiful contemporary yet classic couture bridal gowns, or as she puts it, romantic designs with modern sensibility.

She designed my wedding dress which I couldn’t have been more thrilled with. It was a total hit and even landed up in an article in The Times. I went to Stephanie’s flagship London boutique in Chiltern Street to interview her, and not only does she reveal lots of anecdotes, her inspirations and the the story behind her latest collection, she gives some really great business advice to budding entrepreneurs, and tips to brides searching for their dream dress too.

LEFT: Stephanie and I at one of my fittings. RIGHT: My dream dress in all it’s glory on my wedding day

So Stephanie, what’s the ‘Stephanie Allin’ story? How did you start your company and what’s happened between then and now?

I’m fashion-trained and worked in London for 10 years before I got married. Once I got married, I wanted to immediately start a family, and as many working mothers know, sadly combining a young family with a full time job is really quite challenging.

So I thought about starting my own line of bridal dresses and called a contact I had at Liberty’s to ask for some advice. I was really lucky as she helped me to gat an appointment with the buyers of Harrods’ bridal department. I made six wedding dresses, showed them to Harrods, and they ended up buying two of them and they did really well with one of them. They received lots and lots of repeat orders and that was how I got my foot in the door. Then I was able to start showing at the wholesale shows, and slowly and surely I started building the business.

Now more than ever, standing out and having something unique or different to offer is really important in this industry. How you do feel you’ve done this, and do you have any advice for people who want to do the same?

Being original is the hardest thing – when a girl gets married she wants to be different, but she also wants to be traditional, and there’s always that warring between the needs and the desires.

Additionally, with the rise of Chinese manufacturing it’s been very difficult for people like myself who only manufacture in the UK because of course in China they can do things a lot less expensively. These days there’s just a few of us who are really fighting to keep our manufacturing in the UK and I think that that makes me fairly unique because that’s something truly important to me.

We have the flagship store in Marylebone and the original boutique in Mumbles on the Gower in South Wales. Having my workrooms in Mumbles too enables me to offer a highly flexible service and I prides myself on knowing the name of every bride. Each dress is made from start to finish by one of my expect dressmakers, trained by myself.

What’s the best piece of business advice you’ve ever been given?

Well I’ve made every mistake in the book (!) but the best piece of advice is something my husband said to me at the beginning when I was first setting up the business. He said, “don’t buy things if you can’t afford them, and never put the house up as a guarantee for anything”, and throughout my career I’ve stuck to both of those things – I’ve never borrowed a penny and never had an overdraft.

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