“I was a tom boy when I was young,” she said with a smile. Terin Siriwardane, Owner and Designer of Wedding Dreams says remembering her childhood. She was a rebellious girl with an insatiable fascination for wedding dresses that she has to this day.
Always fascinated with wedding gowns, Terin embarked on achieving her dreams by enrolling for the Diploma in Fashion at the Academy of Design once she finished school. What began as an experiment while she was doing her diploma grew in leaps and bounds and today is one of the sought after shops for every girl’s dream day. “I decided that Wedding Dreams was the perfect name because the wedding day for each girl is the one day that she dreams about ever since she is a child,” she said.
Wedding Dreams offers its customers everything that is needed for a wedding, from the gowns to shoes, cards and boxes. “Sometimes I provide everything for the customers including the theme and sometimes I design just the dresses,” she said. If needed the shop provides clothing needed for the whole bridal retinue.
“I only started with bridal dresses but then I started to design the dresses for bridesmaids and flowergirls, after which I started the designs for the grooms,” she said. Terin says that to design the necessary clothes for the bride was difficult at first, but with the help of what she learnt at the Academy of design she came through.
With over 200 dresses in store, the shop has a wide variety of clothes to choose from. Customers can customize their gowns as well. “I usually sit down and talk with the bride and we come up with what she wants to wear,” she explained.
Every dress that she designs is a personal experience for her. “I consider every aspect before I start to design anything,” she said.
Speaking about the future of Wedding Dreams, Terin says that she is hoping to expand to add a collection of party wear for teenagers as this is a largely untapped market in the country. “There aren’t many places where teenagers can buy a dress for parties and I think I can cater to this demand,” she stated.
Since the shop at present caters to the high end of society, Terin is thinking about catering to the middle market as well. “We have dresses ranging from Rs. 20,000 to Rs. 200,000 but the price depends on the dress itself, the workings and its designs,” she said. As much as three months is all Terin needs to design and get the dress down from Hong Kong where it is made.
Her inspiration for her designs, she says comes from everywhere. “I love the dresses in the Victorian era, I love the attention that they give to the intricacies and the effort that they put into a dress,” she said. The dresses in her shop are different in design and if they are the same in design then they are different in colour, as Terin loves to experiment with colour.
A fan of romantic comedies, she pays special attention to movies of the Victorian Era as they might inspire her for her next design.
Starting the shop as an experiment, Terin says that looking back she is surprised at how it grew throughout the five years that she has been in business. She says that she displayed her designs at an exhibition at BMICH after which inquiries started coming in. “Then I started a tiny shop in Kelaniya and as time went by, I moved first to a little shop in Duplication Road near Commercial bank before I moved here,” she said referring to the current shop that she has in Duplication Road.
A newly married bride to her childhood friend, Terin says that when it came to designing her own dress for the wedding, she had no difficulty at all. “I always had an idea of what I wanted to wear and the only thing was that some of the tiny details changed slightly with time,” she said.
Speaking of her childhood, Terin says that she schooled at Bishops College where she was a part of the swimming team and did athletics as well. Her family she says has been very supportive of her. “My mother helps me out with my work when it gets piled up, she is very good with people so sometimes it is she who talks to the people and gets everything done,” she said.
Growing up with a brother who is just 11 months older than her, Terin says that they were very close and it was he who suggested that she market her designs. “We were practically the same age but he escaped to be a year ahead of me in school because he was born in January and I couldn’t do that because I was born in December,” she said with a laugh.
With a dream of fulfilling every girl’s dreams on her special day, Terin will soon expand her shop with more designs as well as new collection.