Merrily Ever After has been in the works for several years. In the beginning, it was just a dream. My sisters and I talking with our mom about how fun it would be to open a bridal shop where we could all work together and hang out every day while helping brides find their perfect dress. For the longest time it was just talk and we never took it any further. It wasn’t until my son was born that I started thinking we could actually make it a reality. There were a lot of things to consider and more decisions than I could even imagine. But, the more serious we became the more real it felt.

We started thinking about locations and knew where we wanted to be but the spot was unavailable. We attended the National Chicago Bridal Market in September 2014 to meet designers and get our feet wet in the industry. I knew I wanted to work with designers who cared about the brides and not just making a sale. Once we returned home the search was on. We looked at every available commercial space in town but none of them felt right. I knew the atmosphere had to be perfect. All of that changed when my mom had a chance run in with the owner of the space we wanted. He was originally going to turn it into apartments, but knew we were looking and was open to our idea. We went to see the space and it was perfect. Although it needed a lot of work, it was exactly what we wanted. So, the real work started to make it the space you see today. The name came later as a spinoff of my two sisters’ middle names: Raechel Mary and Jenna Lee, so Mary and Lee became Merrily!