Wedding industry impacted as Australians cut back on spending

Some who have been in the industry for decades are giving up and retraining after years of barely eking out a living.

A worker on the front lines of Australia’s wedding industry has warned that many business owners have had enough as potential customers cut back on ‘discretionary spending’.

The ultra prestige end of the wedding sector is suffering following multiple interest rate hikes from the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA), which have caused brides to tighten their budgets, especially when it comes to wedding dresses.

For Helen Manuell, owner of the eponymous Helen Manuell Bridal Couture, demand for her intricate handmade wedding dresses has dried up so drastically that she is learning a new profession.

The Melbourne woman, 53, said she used to have orders for nine dresses a month. Now she’s lucky to get one dress order in two months, and has had to let all her staff go.

“It was pretty obvious, as soon as the RBA starts mucking around with the interest rates, the first thing that’s going to go is the luxury end,” Ms Manuell told news.com.au.

“Wedding dresses are a luxury. Couture — hand made wedding dresses like the ones I make — are beyond a luxury.”

It comes as last month, two mid-tier bridal shops collapsed just days apart, with one of them plunging nearly 100 weddings into jeopardy.

At the end of June, The Bridal Atelier collapsed into liquidation, leading to its Sydney and Melbourne stores shutting down. Just two days later Adelaide boutique Bridal Fusion by Mascia also closed permanently with its owner filing for bankruptcy.

However, not all wedding insiders feel the same way. One designer says the “vast majority” of wedding businesses are doing well, with The Bridal Atelier’s collapse being an aberration. She also said that most mid-range stores were doing well although dresses in the ultra-luxury price range were definitely out of most people’s budgets, especially now.

Helen Manuell (middle) says there is no longer any demand for her elaborate, hand-made gowns.

A liquidation sale is being held all month for collapsed bridal shop Bridal Fusion By Mascia.

“Just as my business was surfacing from the financial devastation of the last three years of Covid-19, I now admit defeat,” Ms Manuell said.

“After nearly 25 years in this industry, I’m done.

“At the age of 53, I saw the writing on the wall late last year and made the decision to go back to university to ‘pivot’.”

The mum is now studying to become a design teacher in high schools to put her couture skills to a different use.

She is still running her business but is not relying on it as her sole stream of income anymore.

Ms Manuell’s dresses sell for upwards of $10,000 as most of them are made from French lace and can take anywhere from 100 to 300 hours of labour to produce.

To date, her most expensive dress was commissioned for $17,000 and it was entirely covered in Swarovski crystals.

Before Covid-19 she had five staff members but now it’s just her. Her highly skilled workforce of couturists, seamstresses and dress markers have “had to do whatever they could to make a living” including becoming cleaners and working in pizza joints.

Covid also created a level of uncertainty in the industry that had never existed before – an uncertainty that unfortunately remains to this day.

“Obviously with Covid it (the wedding industry) died on the spot, immediately,” Ms Manuell said.

“Every time we came out of lockdown, brides might inquire, but they never booked. Brides are nervous to book.”

A trend she has noticed is that a lot of people are having kids before they tie the knot thanks to the pandemic delaying their wedding plans — but this is also bad news for those in the industry.

“Imagine if you’ve had kids, you’ve got a mortgage and a $10,000 wedding dress, something’s got to give,” Ms Manuell pointed out.

“It’s just very sad because this is our careers, this is our livelihood, this is how we put toast on our tables.”

One of the wedding dresses Helen Manuell designed.

Most of Ms Manuell’s dresses are made from French lace.

News.com.au understands the fate of 99 weddings was thrown into doubt last month after a bridal shop called The Bridal Atelier went into liquidation.

Three of its main suppliers — Love Honour, Anna Campbell and Rue de Seine — are doing everything in their power to try to ensure brides have a dress by the time of their wedding day.

The issue lies in the fact many of the brides have paid thousands of dollars in a deposit for their dress — but this money was never passed onto the suppliers.

Emma*, for instance, paid $5600 in two instalments and her wedding is on August 12, but none of this was given to her designer, Love Honour.

The dress company has agreed to provide her with the gown for $3000, which is the absolute minimum they can do it for in order for them to break even. Emma has started a GoFundMe to crowd fund the final price of her dress.

“I don’t always wear dresses, I’m quite fussy. This was the only dress that I fell in love with,” she previously told news.com.au.

Amid the cost of living crisis, the mum-of-two has recently moved to the Central Coast with her partner as prices have gone up in NSW’s capital.

The Bridal Atelier’s collapse has devastated bride-to-bes around Sydney and Melbourne.

Emma is one of the impacted brides.

Then there’s another woman, Kirsty Finn, who had saved up $8000 for her dream wedding dress only to see the money disappear before her eyes.

“It seems my dream wedding dress is lost,” the mum-of-four told news.com.au.

“I’ve been saving for over four years just to have that money go down the drain. That money was from hard savings … now I’ve been told I’ll never see it again.”

Then there’s also Sydney woman Gabrielle* who is just weeks out from her wedding with no dress and $6800 out of pocket from a similar ordeal.

“It’s a lot more than I ever planned on spending, which makes it more heartbreaking,” Gabrielle told news.com.au when The Bridal Atelier first went bust.

Mascia Paradiso closed down her bridal shop two weeks ago. Picture: Emma Brasier.

Bridal Fusion by Mascia has shut down.

Bridal shop owner Mascia Paradiso knows the woes of the wedding industry all too well, after declaring bankruptcy and shutting down her own shop, Bridal Fusion by Mascia, at the end of June.

“Due to the fact of Covid and a marriage breakdown as well as storms and a lot of outside issues, and also personal stress and problems, I decided to declare bankruptcy,” Ms Paradiso, 50, told news.com.au.

“Last November I got hit by a storm, (the store) got flooded, I couldn’t open for weeks on end, right before Christmas. I lost thousands and thousands of dollars,” she explained.

“I had to stop (the business) or else it was going to mentally affect me. I burnt out. I feel like I’ve given so much. I couldn’t hang on.”

The coronavirus crisis softened her up for her final fall, according to her.

“We got forgotten,” the mum said, explaining she received minimal government help as soon as the virus arrived on Australia’s shores in early 2020.

“We were barely meeting our own costs. We still had to pay rent and electricity. We just got left out.”

At its peak she had 14 staff but by the time she closed down, she had already laid them all off.

“I had to withdraw $20,000 out of my own personal super to maintain staff. I was sitting there going ‘What do I do?’.”

Like Ms Manuell, Ms Paradiso noticed that brides were very hesitant to commit to a dress.

“I’ve seen a distinct change in shopping behaviour,” she said. “The panic was there. Fears remained.”

As well as creating her own fashion label for brides, she also stocked other designers, with dresses ranging in price from $1800 to $4500 most of the time.

“I catered to medium socio economic backgrounds. I didn’t go high end, I wouldn’t have survived that,” Ms Paradiso said.

Unfortunately, her business wasn’t able to survive that either in the end.

Anna Campbell is trying to support impacted brides.

One of the dresses in Anna Campbell’s collection.

Ingrid Olic, the owner of dress designer company Love Honour, said her company was trying to help the brides caught up in the collapse of The Bridal Atelier.

“Generally speaking it’s a really beautiful industry to be part of, that brings a lot of joy,” she told news.com.au.

“But the Bridal Atelier got too comfortable in the relationship, we probably weren’t stringent enough,” she added.

Close to 30 future wives had chosen dresses that were supplied through Love Honour, which has since rebranded to Ingrid Olic Bridal.

Ms Olic is not charging these women full retail price for their dresses and is honouring all their contracts, even when some of the orders had never been placed with her.

“We’re working really hard, that’s our first priority. We’re committed to those brides, they’re in an emotional state,” she said.

Anna Campbell, the owner of a bridal designer company of the same, is also working hard to supply impacted brides with their dream dresses.

She had been working with The Bridal Atelier for six years and said the company’s liquidation “was really out of the blue”.

“We don’t want our bride to pay a dollar more than what she agreed to upfront,” she told news.com.au, explaining that the more than dozen brides who opted to buy her dress designs were not being left out of pocket.

“Covid wasn't fun for anyone in bridal or events,” she said.

“This isn’t an easy business to be in … but we genuinely love our brides, we love seeing their fairytales coming to life.”

Another bridal shop, House of Gowns in Melbourne, also revealed the cost of living crisis was making business tough and that brides were looking for more budget-friendly options.

“The inflationary environment has had a huge impact on our industry and it’s a battle we face everyday trying to find ways to allow brides to feel every bit amazing on their day but remain within a reasonable budget,” a spokesperson told news.com.au.

Originally published as Wedding industry impacted as Australians cut back on spending