Wedding Bells: Part 2 – Why I chose Yvonne Creative

I’m not a very rational person to start with. For any decision I make, I won’t be able to tell you the x number of reasons why I chose a particular thing. More often than not, I will reply you with “I feel…” Yes, I’m very emotional and a lot of my decisions is based on my feelings and my intuition (like what food to order, which dress to buy etc).

Therefore similarly, it was my intuition that led me to sign my bridal package with Yvonne Creative. The last Saturday (26 July 2014) before the 7th lunar month starts, we were shopping for a bridal package along the stretch of Tanjong Pagar shophouses. I didn’t have any bridal studio in mind, because I really didn’t do any homework prior to that. Neither have I attended any bridal fair before. I flipped through the bridal magazines gifted by Angelia, but all the bridal gowns look equally stunning to me such that none of it stood out in particular. Hence, I decided to let my intuition do the work again.

We headed to Tanjong Pagar after lunch and the walk from the MRT to the row of shophouses was enough to make me perspire alot. We decided to start from the far end (meaning the furthest away from Maxwell) so we could have a general feel of all the bridal studios on our way to the starting point.

Z Wedding was the first bridal studio we entered. The lady who attended to me, Grace, was really nice and friendly in the beginning. She showed us some photo albums and asked us some questions like when is our wedding date, are we doing lunch or dinner etc so she could check on the availability of the make up artist and photographer. She was the first person to tell us that our wedding date is a hot date, but I didn’t pay much attention to it as I was thinking it was probably their marketing strategy to create a sense of urgency in me. Thereafter, she started asking me if there is any style of wedding gown that I am looking at, or any gowns that I am interested in after flipping through the 2-3 photo albums she showed me. Being the typical me, I didn’t have a very strong opinion on the type of gown that I should be wearing. My bottomline is: so long as I look pretty. I tried a toga wedding gown which the lady recommended. The same toga wedding gown was featured in the bridal magazine. I looked okay in it, but not particularly stunning.

The toga gown which I tried (Credits to Z Wedding’s official website)

After trying one gown, she began to hard-sell us the bridal package. She became very aggressive at one point which I personally felt was quite uncalled for. Her hard selling was primarily directed at me, because in the choice of bridal package, I guess it’s usually the bride-to-be who has more say. Mister felt abit offended at her hard-selling tactics, hence we decided to give it a miss. Afterall, their pricing was on the high side, as they have a collaboration with Chris Ling for the photography which was one of their main selling point too. Thereafter, Mister alerted me to one of our close friends’ review on Z Wedding and we are glad I wasn’t swayed in the shop.

We walked a bit more and passed by a few bridal studios that didn’t quite catch our fancy. Thereafter, we saw someone outside Yvonne Creative that said they are having some promotion lols. So I said, ok let’s check it out! I went inside and I was attended to by Tiffany, the marketing manager of Yvonne Creative. Similar to Z Wedding, they asked the same questions: wedding date, style of wedding gown etc. After the 2nd bridal studio, I concluded that my wedding date is indeed a very hot date. She even showed me her booking schedules for my date as well as other dates so that I could make a fair comparision on the number of bookings for the day. One thing that Yvonne Creative did differently was that they didn’t show me any photo albums and we went straight to trying on gowns. I immediately told her to recommend me a gown which she felt will look good on me. She recommended a tube A-line gown which does look really good on me, which eventually became my chosen gown (a big big secret for now). Thereafter, she even let me try on a different style of gown to illustrate the fact that a tube gown will look better on me, which is true indeed. We were chatting in the fitting room and that’s when I felt that Tiffany is a really nice and warm lady. She showed us the bridal packages that her studio could offer and she assured us that everything can be negotiated as her mother is Yvonne, the designer of the gowns. On the day i signed the package, I saw Yvonne was attending to another bride-to-be with her gown fitting.

We negotiated on the bridal package, like cancelling the evening gown and kua/tea dress as at that point in time, we are not having any dinner banquet and I did not plan to change to another outfit for the tea ceremony. More importantly, Yvonne Creative does not have different categories of gowns that required additional top-up nor charge any additional fees for alteration of the gown (changing of belt/adding of details etc). Feeling assured that there is a gown to my liking and being offered a bridal package of a reasonable pricing, we decided to sign up with them and paid a 50% deposit upfront! That’s when I officially became a Yvonne Creative bride! We fixed the date for gown fitting on 30 August 2014 and our pre-wedding shoot on 14 September 2014 (which is happening this Sunday) before we welcome the travelling month of August 2014 to Korea and Bali.

A week later, I went back to Yvonne Creative and Tiffany to tell them that I require a tea dress for my lunch reception, as I wanted mini fashion show for myself. To my surprise, they actually added a tea dress to my bridal package at no extra charge. I also negotiated for our pre-wedding videographers (Angelia & Huiping) to follow us around on our pre-wedding shoot day so they are able to capture moments of our wedding preparations. I feel this was a huge concession on their part which I am really grateful for, especially when the videographers are not from their studio. In this aspect, I feel their after-sales service is still as warm and friendly as the package sign-up day and they really lived up to their words that everything can be negotiated. For that, thumbs up for them!

With gown-fitting and trial make-up done, so far so good with Yvonne Creative! Points of improvement definitely (like showing me the gowns that were already booked on my actual wedding day), but I’m still enjoying my time being a momentary princess everytime I am in the bridal studio. I will blog more about my gown-fitting and trial make-up journey soon! Fingers crossed that Yvonne Creative continues to deliver their promised quality of service right up to our actual day. I will keep all of you updated 🙂