Grace + Ivory: Better Bridal with Try at Home

Grace + Ivory was founded to pave a path towards better bridal shopping that was more in step with what modern brides want: choice, independence, personalization, and quality. As the Founder, I also initially created the brand based on personal pain points that I, Tina, experienced while shopping for a wedding dress. We’re built on the belief that kickass womxn deserve better bridal and we’re about strong, independent women getting married on their own terms. We are the online try-at-home destination for bridal, and brides order samples to their door directly from our website. Brides can order a sample to their home to try, return, and then order their own custom-made-to-measure wedding dress. By providing made-to-measure, high-quality dresses at affordable, direct-to-consumer prices where every dress benefits women’s programs, we create an amazing and bride-driven try-at-home bridal experience.

The traditional bridal shopping experience is outdated and inconvenient. Pricing is not transparent, mark-up is unreasonable and inflated, and the purchasing process is confusing. I know this from my personal experience. There are limited companies and brands available nationally, with shops typically fragmented.

Through my personal experience and talking with other brides-to-be, there are mutual pain points we’ve all encountered. Grace + Ivory is a try-at-home wedding dress brand that is accessible to the whole US market, offering high quality dresses at affordable prices. We are also focused on sustainable fashion and inclusive sizing with made-to-order and made-to-measure options; none of our dresses are mass produced. Overall, we strive for on an empathetic and fun try-at-home experience infused with responsive customer service, educating our brides on the process, and being supportive through this journey. Giving back and having a social mission is the way to better business and helping our communities; our mission focuses on raising women’s voices and advocating for women’s equality and equity; A portion of every dress purchase benefits woman’s charities.

As we’ve mentioned, our target market is strong, independent women getting married on their own terms. This includes busy women, who are already shopping online and like the convenience of trying on at home. It also includes geographically constrained brides who have limited options that are in driving distance. For market size, the bridal wear market is globally $61.1 billion dollars, with the U.S. Market at about $27 billion in 2022. The “Online” e-commerce segment for bridal wear globally is at 15.1%. From 2021-26, this market is expected to grow by $13.5 billion. People are getting married! We want to better serve this market and as our business grows, so does our social mission contributions. 

Originally founded in Washington, DC, I moved Grace + Ivory to Chicago in 2019 to build out our try-at-home dress program. We've been a friends and family bootstrapping company ever since. We mainly operate online and have a nationwide presence, but our physical office and showroom are located in the Bucktown neighborhood.

Since launching, we have gone through the steps to a proven market concept with our try-at-home program. To date, we’ve worked with over 200 brides. In 2021, 40% of our sales was via our try-at-home program. Starting with our own line of direct-to-consumer dresses, we created our try-at-home process, building out customer service and a logistics process from start to finish. We now are at the point to grow and scale. 

My vision is to build a curated bridal marketplace to support other (mainly women-owned) bridal designers. By collaborating with other small designers, their designs will be available nationwide by expanding the selections of our try-at-home program. This means someone in Seattle can try a Chicago-based designer’s dress sample in WA state, and vice versa.

We’re raising funds to bring on our next bridal designer and to bolster our costs for raising brand awareness. This will support us to partner, invest in the production sample dresses with the designer, and allow us to build a marketing campaign that will reach 5,000+ more brides, creating brand awareness around our mission and brand. Every contribution helps us build and grow our company, we’re grateful for your help.

Thank you!

Tina Wong & The Grace + Ivory Team