All About the Dress

Weddings in style Spends a Day with the Dress Expert, Susan Powell

by Meghan Decker, Photography by Colin Coleman

March 26, 2013

3:57 PM

“I don’t know a lot about anything else, but I do know weddings,” Susan Powell admits. No one in the Lehigh Valley would dispute that she knows just about everything regarding a woman’s most important day. But there’s one aspect she understands most—the dress. As owner of the iconic Nazareth dress shop Bridals by Sandra, Powell, 52, has certainly learned a thing or two over the years. Taking a glimpse behind the bridal boutique reveals a place buzzing with the excitement one would expect to surround the planning of such a special day.

Whatever it takes

It’s a relatively calm weeknight when we catch up with Powell—the calm after the storm. Just one week prior, a hurricane hit the Valley and found Powell and her bridal consultants in the dark for five days. And while they weren’t operating at their usual whirlwind speed, Powell and her staff of consultants were huddled in the dress vault with flashlights, preening through the inventory to extract 34 dresses for weddings that weekend. This “just doing what has to be done” attitude is apparent in everything Powell and her team does. Take a tour and you’ll find yourself witnessing a well-oiled wedding machine, finely tuned through years of experience.

By the time the business landed at its current Route 191 location in 1974, it had expanded three times since its founding in 1965 under the expertise of husband and wife entrepreneurs Sandra and Dallas Yeakel. The pair had built a reputation for having what area brides want and after more than 20 years of success, they passed the business along to their daughter, Powell, in 1983. But don’t think that they faded into retirement—quite the opposite. They established another vital part of the business; distributing gowns wholesale to bridal shops across the country.

There are few dress shops that not only sell the latest designer gowns, but also have the distinction of distributing them to other dress shops across the country. As suppliers of the Jordan, Casablanca and Maggie Sottero lines, their reach spans as far west as North Dakota, as far north as Canada and as far south as Kentucky, stocking the racks at 485 shops. They have their finger on the pulse of what’s coming out, who is designing what and the partnership Powell has with her parents results in customers getting designs often before they become available anywhere else. It goes without saying that Powell has inherited a passion for the dress business and since taking over the shop, she has developed it into quite an operation.

A day at the “office”

Watch Powell in action and it’s obvious she doesn’t get flustered by the lightning speed of an average day. A young consultant rushes a black strapless cocktail dress to Powell asking if it comes in ivory. Powell examines the tag and declares, “That would be terrific in ivory. Yes, I’m sure we can do that for her. Thanks, hon.” Then Powell continues on toward the tiara room glittering with displays of every kind of hair and head accessory imaginable. A loop of a Fashion Week runway show featuring the Pronovias line from Barcelona plays on a television in the corner; Powell was in the audience, she says, and dresses from the show can be seen hanging in an adjacent storage room. There are 28 bridal consultants and none of them work on commission, she says. “They are here because they have a true passion for the business.” Many have worked at Bridals by Sandra for more than five years; some for as long as 25 years. Powell says she feels blessed to have her team; a team that spans far beyond consultants.

There’s her husband of 35 years, Allen, along with four other sales reps who work with nearly 500 gown shops in nine states. There are also seamstresses Diane and Anna, women who spend their days hunched over a sewing machine altering dresses with painstaking precision. Across the room standing at her post behind the ironing board is Elizabeth, who spends 40 hours a week pressing every single dress that comes through the door.

All dresses, Powell tells us, come packaged inside out in a tiny airtight bag similar in design to a Space Bag. Upon arrival, the dress is freed from its tiny package and it’s Elizabeth’s job to analyze every inch to make sure there aren’t any imperfections, then steam out all of the wrinkles until it’s picture perfect. “I believe she has the hardest job of anyone in this building,” Powell says. Then the dress is off to be hung in the enormous vault that is proof of the building’s former life as a dry cleaning business that also stored furs. Dresses for each wedding (not just the bride’s but the bridesmaid, flower girl and mother-of-the-bride) are organized alphabetically by bride’s last name on a massive two-story rack system that can accommodate hundreds of dresses at a time. All that space is necessary once Powell’s busy season hits during the Valley’s most popular months to get married—September and October. That’s when they outfit 50 weddings each weekend, she says.

Amid the ordering, scheduling and logistics of running a small business, Powell still makes sure that she sees every bride who walks through her doors. “Seriously, I see every bride. I need to make sure that everyone is happy.” Twelve-hour days are the norm and she is there every single day. “I dream about what it would be like to work nine to five and go home. I wouldn’t know what I would do with all that time,” jokes the grandmother of four.

Customers come from the Lehigh Valley area and beyond, and Powell says that they have many women booking appointments from New Jersey, New York and Delaware. Those shopping on a tight budget will also flock to another arm of the Bridals by Sandra empire, Powell’s Allentown bridal outlet, Sue Ames. Since dresses take six to nine months to arrive, Powell sees brides one year to 18 months prior to their wedding. On Saturdays, their busiest day of the week, it isn’t unusual for the team to have all 15 dressing rooms going at once.

The moment

While some dress styles sell well in any market, some sell extremely well in certain regions, and for obvious reasons. East Coast and New England brides tend to have a lot of church weddings so they opt for sleeves and more conservative styles. Midwestern brides-to-be also tend to be more conservative, while women down south need lighter fabrics and less frills for their balmy outdoor weddings. This makes sense, to match your dress to your venue, Powell says, and that’s really at the core of selecting the right dress for you. Her bridal consultants are trained to ask lots of questions during an initial consultation and “your venue tells us a lot,” she says.

A bride getting married in an ornate church is going to need a different kind of dress than, say, someone getting married at the sleek, industrial SteelStacks, or classic and traditional Historic Hotel Bethlehem. Time of year and even time of day is also taken into consideration when consultants select dresses for a bride to try on. That’s why dressing rooms are outfitted with overhead lights on a dimmer, to simulate everything from a sunny day outside, to a candlelit indoor wedding at night. Powell recommends that brides bring their mother with them, if possible, because they can usually offer an unbiased opinion and have their daughter’s best interest at heart. Bringing friends along to an appointment, Powell says, can sometimes lead to differing opinions and, if they’re single, unfavorable motives.

The moment when “the dress” is discovered is undeniably special, Powell explains. “Her shoulders will go back…and she lights up like a light bulb.” Consultants have to listen, watch and be patient, she says. “They can’t be in a hurry to sell a dress.” Tastes change and styles come and go but one thing prevails, a bride wants to be her most beautiful. “They want to show off their assets and wear something figure-flattering. Ultimately, it’s always about the wow factor.”