Why So Many Brands Are Saying ‘I Do’ to Bridal

When couture designer Silvia Tcherassi’s son Mauricio got married last year, it wasn’t just a milestone for her family, but her business, too.

While the brand did not previously carry a permanent wedding offering, for the event, the designer sold 80 dresses to the bridal party and other guests. It was a sign, according to Mauricio Tcherassi, the company’s chief commercial officer. In April, it launched its fourth bridal collection — following releases in 2005, 2015 and 2024 — formalising weddings as a part of its offering.

The collection includes everything from intricate lace gowns requiring an in-person appointment to suiting separates from $1,500. Today, it sits front-and-centre on its website, alongside its spring couture pieces, and bridal represents five percent of the business at the brand’s Miami flagship store.

But it’s the “spider web” of additional purchases, including dresses for the mother of the bride and bridesmaids, Mauricio said, that makes the difference.

“That can really take your month from an okay month or a good month to an excellent month,” he said. “If you land these big moments … you’re getting not just the bride, but then you can multiply that by three, four, five, six.”

Silvia Tcherassi is far from the only womenswear brand tapping this white-hot opportunity, which was historically reserved for bridal-specific houses like Vera Wang. Banking on their ability to sell popular silhouettes in white, as well as cater to ever-expanding wedding weekends made up of multiple looks, brands from resort-friendly Patbo and Cult Gaia to emerging labels like Tanner Fletcher and Kindred of Ireland are launching their own wedding collections. Ssense, which in April launched its third bridal capsule, even partnered with brands including Issey Miyake and Colleen Allen to help launch their debut bridal collections.

Weddings get shoppers excited: Cult Gaia, for instance, had its biggest-ever sales day on April 15, the day it launched its bridal collection. But it can also be a safe harbour in economically challenging times.

“It’s a business that will literally never die,” said Yael Friedman, global public relations manager at Israeli bridal house Galia Lahav. “Everyone’s going to get married forever. It’s a huge industry for a reason.”

But before diving in, brands need to ensure their consumer has an appetite for the category. Jasmin Larian Hekmat, founder of Cult Gaia, decided to launch bridal after requests routinely came up in the brand’s Instagram direct messages and feedback from stores; women were frequently buying white versions of their ready-to-wear dresses for engagement or after-parties.

“You need to be super close with your customer,” she said. “Listen to what their needs are.”

Natural Crossover

Like Cult Gaia, it was the customers that led linen brand Kindred of Ireland to decide to launch bridal. Founder Amy Anderson noticed the white Grace dress from its ready-to-wear offering was consistently re-pinned as wedding inspiration on Pinterest. And while the brand produced just a few — around five — bespoke wedding dresses per year, it was receiving two to three bridal requests per week.

To respond to demand, the brand rolled out its bridal collection in February, which features linen wedding dresses, blazers and “something blue” pieces inspired by best-selling silhouettes in its ready-to-wear lineup. The brand has already doubled the projections it had set for the collection’s first few months, said Joel Anderson, the brand’s chief executive officer.

Others, like Tanner Fletcher, which debuted bridal in April 2024, noticed that clients were repurposing their existing ready-to-wear pieces, which co-founder Tanner Richie described as very romantic and light and airy, for their weddings. Since then, they’ve doubled down on the association: It showed its collection of dresses and suiting in a church during New York Bridal Week earlier this month, hosting a real couple’s wedding ceremony during the show — wearing the brand’s ruffled blouses and floral suits, naturally.

These brands are also catering to demographics that had not previously been represented in the traditional bridal market. For example, simpler looks for city hall weddings are gaining traction, with city hall dress searches growing 128 percent on Pinterest. For Tanner Fletcher, it meant creating wedding looks for its existing client base, many of whom are queer and felt limited by the options from traditional bridal labels. With its wedding wear, Tanner Fletcher aims to bridge that gap.

“It’s combining fashion and bridal,” said Fletcher Kasell, Tanner Fletcher’s other co-founder. “It’s not that bridal is so separate. People want to feel like their authentic selves, not like, ‘Who’s this?’ … We’re really selling an aesthetic rather than a category,” he said, pointing out that many bridal clients already shop the brand’s ready-to-wear.

Shoppers are also gravitating towards pieces that can be reworn over time, especially if they are purchasing a multitude of looks for their big day, from bachelorette outfits to rehearsal dinner and after-party dresses.

While womenswear brands are a natural fit for these in terms of wearability and price point, even bridal-specific labels, like Galia Lahav, are seeing an uptick in shoppers purchasing pieces that can be reworn beyond their wedding day, like a corset and skirt duo. Lynn Rozenberg, the brand’s head of marketing, said that while the influx of womenswear brands are not competing with their “bridal couture craftsmanship … they’re competing with us on wedding weekend.”

Fabrics that travel well, like Magda Butrym’s crochet pieces, and are lighter, like Kindred of Ireland’s and Cult Gaia’s linen, are well-suited to tropical destination weddings, which are also growing in popularity per Pinterest’s 2025 weddings report.

“At my own wedding, I was in Mexico and was sweating — I had to cut out the inside of my dress,” said Larian Hekmat. “Brides are pretty much catered silk, and silk can be very sweaty, so we were able to offer some easier, breezier, effortless styles.”

Organic Amplification

Social media is also driving the bridalwear explosion, with bridal collections serving as a tool to grab more consumer eyeballs.

For Silvia Tcherassi, for instance, wedding-related content engagement is 10 times higher than for other posts on Instagram. The emotional quality, particularly of imagery from real weddings, is highly engaging, and can drive organic visibility without the brand needing to pay a premium for it, said Mauricio Tcherassi.

“The whole communication around bridal is something that resonates with the shopper very strongly … and often actually transacts into anything else from your collection,” said Jakub Czarnota, Magda Butrym’s chief executive officer.

Brides creating their own high-quality content — often with a content creator in tow in addition to their wedding photographer and videographer — has also become de rigueur as many seek out coverage in fashion media like Vogue Weddings, Over the Moon and Harper’s Bazaar. For some, like Ivy Getty and Sofia Richie Grainge, beautiful wedding photography gone viral was a launchpad for growing their follower bases. Mariel Salazar, Mauricio Tcherassi’s wife, also saw her following balloon from 2,000 to 24,000 after their wedding. Reposting that content is a boon for brands, too.

“What gets very, very viral is real brides, real authentic content, and this is also what we invest a lot in,” said Galia Lahav’s Friedman, who often works with clients to share content from their weddings on the brand’s social channels. “The audience doesn’t want to see advertisements. They want to see someone they can relate to.”

Many content creators are also invited to bridal studios to try on pieces and share their experiences online. And with brides posting multiple looks, brands also have more content to work with. One creator, Corryn Timmerman, for instance, posted a 62-part wedding outfit series on TikTok.

For ready-to-wear brands, offering bridal can also be something of a customer retention tool. When a brand sells someone a look for their wedding, it ups the chance that they’ll come back for more later.

“The customer that connects to you in this moment of significance is much more likely to become a die-hard fan for life,” said Czarnota. “You were part of the most important day of her life, you have a very positive emotional connection.”