Custom Wedding Dresses vs. Off-the-Rack: What Brides Need to Know | WDP Ep 81

🎧 Listen to learn:

• Why more brides are choosing custom wedding dresses over off-the-rack styles
• How bridal gown customization can work
• How to set a realistic wedding dress budget without sacrificing quality
• What couture craftsmanship brings to the bridal shopping experience
• Why personalized bridal appointments make all the difference

Is your dream wedding dress waiting on the rack—or is it waiting to be created? On this episode of the Wedding Day Podcast, Iron Diamond Media Owner Sonja Babich and California Wedding Day, Oregon Wedding Day and Washington Wedding Day Publisher Alexis Sanabria sit down with Mariam Ohanyan, founder, stylist and designer of Mareh Couture, to explore the growing demand for custom wedding dresses and personalized bridal styling.

From transforming existing gowns through thoughtful customization to helping brides prioritize timeless design over short-lived trends, Mariam shares how couture craftsmanship and one-on-one service create an unforgettable bridal shopping experience. She also discusses budgeting for a custom gown, the importance of quality construction and why every bride deserves a dress that reflects her unique story.

Whether you're beginning your wedding dress search or simply curious about the world of bridal couture, this conversation offers expert insight into finding a gown you'll love for a lifetime. Tune in for an inspiring discussion on custom bridal fashion, wedding dress shopping and creating a look that's authentically you.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Welcome to Wedding Day Podcast with your host Sonia Babbage, CEO of Iron Diamond Media, a leading wedding resource featuring seven localized wedding brands across the country. Hi everybody, Sonia here with Wedding Day Podcast. We're here in sunny California, and I'm sitting here with my publisher Alexa Sanabria of Washington, Oregon, California. Yes. And we have Miriam here with Marie Couture. She is a dress designer and such a cheerleader of California Wedding Day. And just you're just gonna fall in love with her. And I'm so excited for all of you to get to meet her today. So hi Miriam. I'm so excited to be here. I'm so excited. And your store is in San Luis Obispo, which is like one of my favorite places in the world. It's so beautiful. Yeah, so special there. What made you like put your brick and mortar in San Luis Obispo?

SPEAKER_00 0:55

I fell in love with San Luis Obispo when I visited it first, and this was about 10 years ago, and I already knew back then that I am going to have my shopping there. I'm very good friends with all the business owners in town, and I just cannot imagine having my shop anywhere else because it's such a good community. Everyone is a cheerleader in there. Um, and Slow is just a beautiful, beautiful town to be in. So my family moved there, and I opened my shopping there, and we just expanded into the new location earlier this year. Yes, it's very exciting. I went three times bigger, so fingers crossed. Wow! It's a super fun place because I really wanted to have um a space where I could have my studio with my boutique, and the building is the historic building that housed the first bridal store in the town for like three years ago.

SPEAKER_02 1:48

I was reading about that, it's really special, it's very special.

SPEAKER_00 1:51

So I wanted to bring back the spot that was known as the wedding dress shop, right? And also I have a second floor upstairs where I'm building my studio, so then I can have my studio in there and I can have the downstairs for all my brides and all the good stuff in there.

SPEAKER_01 2:05

So in your store, do you have dresses that are can try on and all ready to go have that formal dress fitting, right?

SPEAKER_00 2:14

Yes, so I have designers that I carry. I also have my own collection, which I limit to only a few pieces a year, just because it's a lot of work and I'm one woman who finds the dresses forever and also it's a lot of handwork and time that goes into it. So I try to limit my collection as far as that goes, but I curate a really big variety of handmade um Kato gowns and designers that I like to work with, and then you can come in, try them on, and they're all made-to-order with a lot of options of customizations, um, modern name bridal, all of the exciting and wonderful things, and then we order the dress for the bride specifically, and it will come in about six to nine months, depending on the designer and the fittings.

SPEAKER_02 2:57

How many dresses are in your current collection?

SPEAKER_00 3:00

In my yes, uh in my personal collection, I have about ten right now. Hopefully, I will have five more next year, but I also launched on top of all of this bridal laundry line. So I will make and design matching laundry pieces with the gown. So if you're purchasing the gown and I can source that fabric and lace, I will make you a matching set.

SPEAKER_01 3:23

I think I do that. I think I know that.

SPEAKER_00 3:26

I spilled the beans to you before I did it.

SPEAKER_01 3:29

That's so beautiful.

SPEAKER_00 3:31

Yes, it's a lot of work, but it's all good work when you're loving what you're doing. It doesn't feel like work and you girls know that's a happy job to have, so yeah.

SPEAKER_02 3:41

We work in a really just special industry, I feel like.

SPEAKER_00 3:45

We really do. Yeah, and we will always be in business, you know. Weddings and funerals, not funerals.

SPEAKER_01 3:50

I know. I'm like someday I'll have a funeral magazine for inspiration how to throw a good celebration.

SPEAKER_00 3:55

Yeah, and have fun. Yeah. It's one of those things that is always gonna be here. It has always been here, it always will be. So weddings are beautiful, bridal gowns are very important as we all know. And it just celebrating today is important.

SPEAKER_01 4:12

What I loved is that you're like being futuristic with your designs. Like you're seeing what your brides want and you're envisioning what they're gonna want next. How what what how like when's a moment when that happens or when you see it? What do you do? Do you run up and start sketching?

SPEAKER_00 4:30

Or I think my biggest inspiration are my brides. I am a very good listener when they're in my store, and they will tell me things and details that they would love um love for the dress to have, and then I'll take that and I'll absorb it. I think my own designs and my own creative process is sort of like a creative release. It's not more so for having the sale as far as my designs go, it's more so for my own happiness and just making something beautiful. But then I also concentrate a lot when I'm curating the dresses for my designers and I'm searching the collections and touching the fabrics of what's come, what's to come next year, because these are dresses that are not in the stores yet, these are dresses that were already pre-selecting for the brides for next year, right? So when I'm choosing and selecting those, I always have my bride in mind of what they would want to see, they would want to feel when they try on the dress, how they would want to feel, and I always think about the future. So 50 years later, when they look back on the dress, they still love it so much, they come to me and give me a hug. And say, Thank you for finding the most perfect dress for me. I try to not concentrate too much on trends, yeah, because they come and go all the time. I concentrate more so on what will be here long term and what you should wear, tuning out all the trends for a moment and staying true to yourself.

SPEAKER_01 6:00

You know what's funny you say that we actually have been avoiding bringing up trends on the podcast because trends are always changing.

SPEAKER_02 6:06

Right.

SPEAKER_01 6:07

It is like I I want to talk about them, but then I'm like when that comes out, something else has come up. Something's been released.

SPEAKER_02 6:14

Yeah. So you have ten in your collection. Do you do custom?

SPEAKER_00 6:18

I do custom. Most of my um store is pretty much custom made.

SPEAKER_02 6:22

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 6:22

It's handmade designers that I pick so that you can change, change things that you want. You want a lower neckline done, you want to change a neckline done, you want to take the top of one dress, put the bottom of another done. It's a whole possibility when you go into the handmade craftsmanship area. Um, and a lot of things can be changed. Sometimes I will have brides who will just fall in love with the dress as is, but then I also have brides who look at the dress and I can feel that little hesitation. So I'll guide them through telling me what it is they're hesitating about. And then in 99.9% of the time I can fix that. It's not always a golden rule of finding the perfect dress right away. Right. It's more so maybe the perfect dress needs to be created for you and made more into personal experience, more into your dress, and that way you feel more like, okay, this feels like the right dress I'm gonna walk out and get married to the love of my life in.

SPEAKER_01 7:16

So when they come in and they're okay, they may have thought, like, I'm just gonna come in and try on dresses, and then you open the can of worms of like, do you want to try a custom dress? Do you feel like it lights lights up when you say that to them? Because I feel like they would be like, You're gonna make a dress that's only for me and nobody else is gonna have. I feel like why wouldn't you like yeah? Then they then they're probably looking at their mom and being like, Mom, I don't know how that's in our budget. But like, how does that like price-wise to create a custom dress for brides?

SPEAKER_00 7:45

Um, I think the most important um thing when you're going into wedding dress shopping is that you have to have the understanding of what your budget is.

SPEAKER_02 7:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 7:55

Because if you're going way over the budget, then you're falling in love with something that you just are gonna work very hard to pay off and at the end it's not gonna feel as joyful anymore because you went way over the budget. So why don't the I have a little questionnaire that I sent out to my brides. One of the most important questions you have to answer is what's your budget? Because if the budget, let's say is 2000, we can still work with customization, but I will make sure that those customizations are within the budget. If the budget is higher, then I can pull out dresses that can have more extensive customization, that can have more of that details and price range and all of that, and then give a variety too. I think it really comes down to what the expectation is, what the reality is, and how much wiggle room you can have in between. Yeah. Um, because if you give me a price range, I will make my magic work in between that price range, as long as it's not below 1500. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 8:52

Do you feel like custom dresses are becoming more of a thing?

SPEAKER_00 8:55

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 8:56

I feel like that art in this generation doesn't want to have the same dress as their friend from college.

SPEAKER_00 9:02

Absolutely. I will have a bride of mine um send me a text and say, Hey, I'm so excited, my sister-in-law is coming to you for her dress shopping. You would please not give her my dress. Yeah. You know, and that's where it is. A lot of times we're seeing everything online, and I'm very involved with my followers. Most of my followers are my actual brides, and then you know, my industry people. Yes. Um, so they see when I'm posting anything, and I I get invited to the weddings all the time, so I'm going and stuffing the train, all the good stuff, and they're seeing the dress, and they're like, you know what? I really love this dress, but I don't want to be wearing the same dress that someone else is wearing. And of course, it's different on everybody, but knowing that you have the option of changing things is key. Yeah, that's what sets Bridal apart from all these online, you know, Shane, Ellie, whatever. That's what good quality handmade designer couture dresses are about, to have the flexibility without um putting aside the importance of quality. Right because quality is everything. You don't want a dress that's gonna look blue under the sun when you walk out, you want something that's a natural color, you want something that is sweat resistant, you want something that's not gonna rip apart on you in your wedding. So quality is key. And knowing that you can have the good quality while you make the dress very personal to your own liking, I think that's what sets my store, at least apart from um some of the other stores, is because I hands-on will design it for you. That's what it is. Not just that I will design my own dress, but I'll take my designer dresses, right? I will hands-on make it your own. And because I have such good people I work with as my designers, I can make that happen. I don't have to call them and say, hey, could you do this? I know they can do this, and I can change it, I can sketch it, I can color it for them, color code everything, send it to them, and they can have it done.

SPEAKER_02 10:59

So easy. Are you a designer by like education or by like love?

SPEAKER_01 11:05

I was born that way. Good answer. Lady Gaga born this way. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:11

It came, I think, from my mom. My education is very different. My bachelor's is in linguistics and teaching. My master's is in international journalism, so completely different design. Okay. But my mom is a designer and she grew up sewing and altering and changing things. And my grandma, well, my stepgrandma was telling me that when she was a little girl, they had these white curtains in their house. And funny enough, my mom's dad was a publisher of their local magazine in town. So when he would go to work, she would take down the white curtains, turn it into a wedding dress, put it on, play, turn it back into curtains, and then I'll put it back on before her dad would come home because then she would be in trouble. Yeah. And I remember hearing the story as a kid, and she would always help me make my dresses because I didn't want to show up to school with just wearing any dresses. Most of my dresses were made by my mom.

SPEAKER_01 12:06

Oh.

SPEAKER_00 12:07

So it was kind of a connection between us as both. I think the designer is me was in me was born with my mom growing up. So I didn't really feel like I needed to go to design school for it because by the time I was 16, I was already designing my own things. So I wanted to explore other things. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 12:24

But I came back to it when I was like, valued it more too.

SPEAKER_00 12:28

Yes, now it's all hands-on.

SPEAKER_01 12:30

So the process of the whole from start to finish, like how many times do you see them? Like through the process, like trying on, like how like the you need to have to probably paint that picture. If they're like, yep, we're gonna do a designer dress, custom dress, but this is the time frame. It's a it's a commitment.

SPEAKER_00 12:47

It's a commitment. I have prize that I work with for three years. I have prize work with a year. The least amount I would say for custom would be about six months, and that's if we're spitting things up. And I work seven days a week, I really do. And my my house is very close to my store. I walk there, so I can go and come, go and come. So it doesn't feel like work in that sense. Yeah, yeah. Um, but I put a lot of time, my brides can text me in the middle of the night with something, and I'll I'll answer. And they'll be like, I could just sleep. We were hoping you would answer tomorrow, not now. But I'm very involved and fast with communication. So I think that helps with the timeline, but realistically and not to rush the process. A year would be a good time, and we would get to see each other multiple times in the beginning, and then I have a really good simstress I work with, so then when it's time for restoration, they'll come to the simstress, and I'm still very hands-on with that, very involved. Even after the wedding, then they're like, Okay, so what how are we preserving this dress? How are we keeping this for generations to come? Because most of the time I will tell my brides, clean your dress, keep it. You never know. You might have a beautiful daughter down the road who will want to take a piece of your dress and turn it into something special for her. So most of the time we'll still continue talking and working and seeing each other, even after the wedding guest day, you know, the the wedding day, which is really fun.

SPEAKER_01 14:12

Do you ever have like moms, mother of the brides with custom looks?

SPEAKER_00 14:16

I do, I do, and that's one of the goals that I'm doing this year now with expansion. I want to um bring in a couple lines that are completely custom made for moms. I hadn't been doing it before because my space in downtown was much smaller compared to what I have now. But now I have the option of going forward with having the mums as well. Before that, it was more like a free advice to show me what you have and how I can guide you to where to go, but now I will actually be able to.

SPEAKER_01 14:45

I think that's gonna be a home run for you. My mom had two out of the three custom and she looked stunning because it was tailored to her body.

SPEAKER_00 14:52

You know, the problem is most of the mom's dresses that are made these days are like grandma dresses. Like I'm a hard mom, I want to show you. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 15:00

And there's this one dress that I see every time, the black with the sparkles on the side, and like it needs to retire.

SPEAKER_00 15:08

As retired in my bookstores, absolutely, that's what it is. Moms want to feel beautiful too. It's their kid they, you know, it's either the daughter-in-law or it's the daughter or their son, whoever it is that is getting married, it's it's their kid that they helped raise, and now it's this most important day of their lives, and they're just wearing something that they had to buy from Macy's, and they're not able to customize it and make it unique. Moms deserve attention 100%. So hopefully by next year, this time, I will already have that collection curated as well.

SPEAKER_02 15:42

We can't wait to see it.

SPEAKER_00 15:43

I'm so excited. I just keep taking on these projects, and hopefully, I will still be able to do everything that I have been wanting to do for a very long time, and this location should give me that.

SPEAKER_02 15:55

So I'm so excited for you. Do most of your brides then come locally to you or yes and no.

SPEAKER_00 16:02

Okay, yes, because um, again, it's such a small community where um I am from, and all of the brides know each other, and all of the families know each other, so one person tells the other they're my biggest advertisement. They will tell each other, go to Morekto or Maryam Gatchu. So most of them locals will come, but also because it's Central Coast and it's a destination wedding place, I will have people all the way from Santa Barbara area, I'll have people all the way from Pascelinas toward Monterey area. A lot of people will come and shop there because also their weddings are happening there, so it makes sense to just have everything done in one place, have it stored in one place, and then come right before the wedding to have it steamed and ready and put it on and go get married. So most of the time, all the no locals will be shopping there, but also because I'm creating more of a budget-friendly custom dresses where you don't have to spend 30,000 to have it. I have brides who will fly all the way from New York for the dress. Washington, my you know, my last bride was from New York and she flew in and she flew in twice more for her alterations, and then she's like, I cannot believe that with all the tickets, hotels, and everything, I still ended up spending less than what I would have if I had gotten in New York. And the other thing is I do very personal um appointments, and it's only it's only me who works with my brides. I rather block out the time where it's only you I'm working it one-on-one, and I'm not concentrating on five other people when it's your time, yeah, and just concentrating on that one particular moment rather than take all the business and then not be able to fulfill everyone's happiness in between. So my appointments will be completely closed doors, and it's just us and we're working on it, and it's personal and it feels good, and you don't get that in most of the places because then you also have to pay for everyone to come and style the girls, you have to pay for all the dressing rooms, and there's just a lot that goes into it, and sometimes when you're shopping for your wedding dress with all the emotions happening, you really don't want someone next to you.

SPEAKER_01 18:18

No, yeah, you they feel it's their day, nobody else is getting married that day.

SPEAKER_00 18:22

Exactly. And what if someone next to you finds the perfect dress and you don't? And all of a sudden you're like no, and maybe this is a sign, maybe I shouldn't get married, maybe so much that goes into your head that's behind. The emotions, yeah, the psychological aspect of it, it it is the most important dress of their lives. So you have to be very careful at how you're approaching the situation, and I'm very open about it from the beginning. So when my brides come to me, because I'm on Instagram all the time, it's about me, not anyone else, they kind of know me already before they come, so they feel at peace, and then yes, they will find from New York, they will come from LA, they will come from all over the place, um, because they will get that one-on-one, custom, um, very curated experience that's just for them and not for from a big shop that has multiple dressing rooms and multiple rides at a time.

SPEAKER_01 19:17

Yeah, yeah, no. Okay, we're gonna play a game. Okay, this or that, okay? Okay, and I'm totally winging this. This is like totally like Sonia's head. So here we go. She is like, oh my gosh, Sonia, what are you doing? Alright, this is very your world, so here we go. And hopefully we'll have like five or six of them. Sleeves or no sleeves?

SPEAKER_00 19:40

No sleeves.

SPEAKER_01 19:41

A-line or ball gown?

SPEAKER_00 19:42

Ball gown.

SPEAKER_01 19:44

Lace or satin? Satin all the way. Beaded or silk?

SPEAKER_00 19:50

Uh silk.

SPEAKER_01 19:52

Straps or strapless?

SPEAKER_00 19:54

Strapless.

SPEAKER_01 19:56

Veil or no veil?

SPEAKER_00 19:58

Veil.

SPEAKER_01 19:59

Veil. Train or no train.

SPEAKER_00 20:04

Train.

SPEAKER_01 20:05

That's it.

SPEAKER_00 20:05

I did pretty good. Amazing. I needed to hold.

SPEAKER_01 20:11

Well, uh, Miriam, it's like been so awesome to have you on here. And I hope everybody just fell in love with you. I'm like, now I want to go to the store. And if you're doing an open house, let us know. We want to help you celebrate that. Yeah. I would love to have you girls. Yeah. I need a I need a reason to come back to slow. So I think you're my reason.

SPEAKER_00 20:29

And wine.

SPEAKER_01 20:34

There's a lot of wine reads and slow. Yes.

SPEAKER_00 20:37

Absolutely. I can't wait. I'll be super excited to have you girls.

SPEAKER_01 20:43

Thank you for tuning into Winnie the Podcast. We'll see you next time.