OLD TOWN — Lovely bridal shop, which bills itself as the "cool" wedding fashion store, is opening its first Chicago outpost in a storefront formerly occupied by Greer stationery shop.
Lovely founder Lanie List, a fashion industry veteran, is gearing up to open the bridal shop, 1657 N. Wells St., sometime in September, she said in an email.
It will join locations in 12 other cities, including New York City, Miami and Los Angeles.
The Chicago shop will sell a variety of wedding gowns, many of them by emerging designers like Limor Rosen, Leanne Marshall and Ivy & Aster. List said customers are especially excited about Lovely's exclusive brand, Louvienne.
List, who began opening shops in 2010, is a former trend researcher at Target, .
"This industry hasn't changed in so long because there's David's Bridal and there's thousands of mom-and-pop stores, but there was no cool store that had multiple locations," she told Fashionista magazine.
She defines cool as the designers they carry plus "a casual laid back environment."
According to the American Wedding Study commissioned by Brides magazine, the average price of a wedding dress in 2015 was $1,517, up from $1,380 in 2014. Ten percent of brides buy a second dress for the reception and another 7 percent buy another dress for the after-party.
List says that one growing product for bridal shops are "anniversary dresses," which women buy to mark their one-year anniversary.
Lovely Bridal replaces Greer at the Wells Street location. The company sells a variety of paper goods such as cards, wrapping paper and journals and moved out of the building earlier this summer after a decade of business there.
Greer is now gearing up to open a new, smaller location in Lincoln Park, at 1013 W. Webster Ave., in the coming weeks.
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