OFM style
What are you looking forward to in 2021? To be able to get back to normal life. I cannot wait to hug my brides and see their happy faces in person. Our incredible team pulled together and made these virtual appointments absolutely amazing, but for me, there is nothing better than standing alongside a bride and sharing that emotion and the interaction with family and friends. What can audiences expect from the new spinoff, Say Yes to the Dress: In Sickness and In Health, that will premiere on the new Discovery+ app? It is going to be so exciting! What’s great about this series is that we have figured out how to jump through hoops to reach brides whose weddings were canceled or postponed. This has been quite a year, so for us to be able to find a way to help them, that is an amazing accomplishment for 2020. We were able to help these brides find a dress and say yes virtually. How bad has the pandemic hit the wedding industry, and do you think it will ever be able to fully recover? That is a good question. I’ll be honest with you, Denny, a lot of these salons are mom-and-pop salons. They are basically living paycheck to paycheck, and they are struggling and having to close their doors. It is going to be very difficult. When the pandemic started, I had a collection of around 22 new dresses ready to show in Amsterdam, and I was not able to show those. To this day, I have, like, 150 dresses that are still stuck in a storage facility in Kentucky that I have not been able to ship out because weddings have been put on hold, postponed, canceled, or whatever. So, I am paying for storage for those dresses. In the bridal industry, you may not know this, but a store puts in an order, and we pay for the fabric, the production, the shipping, and the fees to get them imported in. Because of the virus, fewer flights have been coming in from overseas. There are now limited spaces on flights. It used to cost about $25 to ship a dress, but now it is costing me, like, $150. I am actually losing money on every, single dress I sell. Say Yes to the Dress began in 2007 and has produced 19 seasons, as well as several spinoffs. Why do you think the show has been such a success all these years? I will tell you my personal take on it. In the beginning, I said, ‘Absolutely not. I will not do this show.’ Now, doing the show, one, we do not script the show. I won’t even meet the bride until the cameras are rolling because I want that first meeting to be genuine. I do not want to know anything about her or the entourage. I want to walk into that appointment like I would any other appointment and it be caught on camera, so you get the real reaction. I think the fact that it is real reality TV, I think the audience can tell. 4 8 OFM J A N U A R Y 2 0 2 1
Beyond that, Say Yes to the Dress addresses some deep subjects. Like, a father is not going to be able to live long enough to walk the daughter down the aisle. We had the girl who lost her leg in the Boston bombing, a girl with a bionic arm, a girl who lost her dress in the floods in Louisiana, girls who come in and have such horrific family members, whether it be their mother, brother, or whoever. Friends that treat them so horribly, or they have body issues. Even though we go through this throughout the entire appointment, at the end, you always end up with this couple walking down the aisle in love. [Also, there is] this beautiful song that was written by Kristian Bush, specifically for our show. He came as a guest, and he was so inspired by being there, he created the song for us. To have that song being played and seeing these people walk down the aisle and sharing their love, I think it gives people hope. During this pandemic, I think that is one of the greatest things that we need right now. Just some hope.
