NEW LIFE:Chiara Trench was a partner at a branch of Specsavers in Carlow until she was inspired by the loss of her wedding dress to establish her own one-stop bridal shop, writes Olivia Kelleher
LIKE MOST brides-to-be, Chiara Trench from Mayo had definite ideas about what her wedding dress should look like. In early 2006 she found the perfect gown at a bridal boutique in Cork city called The Wedding Dress and immediately put down a €1,000 deposit on it.
She continued with her hectic job at Specsavers, safe in the knowledge that the most important wedding-day purchase had been made and that all she needed to do was buy shoes and jewellery. Until one morning in March 2006, when Trench noticed that she had 10 missed calls on her phone.
Then her husband-to-be James called to say he had some "bad news". Initially, Trench thought that somebody in her family had died - so it was some form of a relief when James told her that the bridal shop in which she had bought her dress had gone bankrupt overnight.
Trench had the option of attending a creditors' meeting a few weeks later. But she couldn't bear to travel to Cork for what she felt would essentially be a "worthless" exercise.
"I just got on with it, because I knew there would be no sign of getting my dress back. There wasn't any point to going to the creditors' meeting. I was upset about losing the dress and the money but I tried to keep it in perspective. We were lucky because it was a few months before the wedding so I had time to sort things out."
Trench considered looking for another dress but then she decided to source the original gown through its Spanish manufacturer. She asked her Spanish-speaking sister to arrange to have the dress re-routed through a bridal boutique in Arklow.
The distributors in Spain were a bit "stand-offish" initially, but Trench was amazed at how quickly the whole transaction was completed.
At the time, she was a senior partner at a branch of Specsavers in Carlow. She had worked as an opthalmic optician for seven years and thoroughly enjoyed her job the majority of the time.
However, her store had become increasingly busy and she felt caught up in the "rat race".
An optician's work is, by its very nature, repetitive - and towards the end of her tenure with Specsavers she wasn't finding the busy working life as rewarding as she used to in the early days.
"I had run the optician's in a way that it didn't feel like a conveyor belt. We tried to give the personal touch and it became more and more busy. It just got really stressful.
"Life is about changing and moving. If you are stressed out to the max you need to listen to it. Earlier this year my sister passed away from cancer, so I feel life is for living."
The disaster with Trench's dress got her thinking about the bridal market. She had travelled to Cork for her dress because, at the time, Carlow didn't have many bridal stores. Carlow is a pretty central location for a bridal store and the idea grew in her mind to set up a "one-stop shop" for brides.
Trench noticed that a lot of bridal stores stocked the same brands and she made it her mission to introduce new ranges to Ireland. She also decided that her store would branch away from the traditional "dress only" option and sell invitations, jewellery, wedding candles and silk flowers.
Opening the store required a certain amount of research and planning. Trench visited other shops to assess their service, cleanliness and attention to detail. She also got a number of international designers on board on an exclusive basis for her new enterprise.
Trench's bridal shop, The Wedding Collection, opened in Carlow last November. The former optician thoroughly enjoys tailoring to brides' individual needs - brides she claims are generally "great craic", with many really enjoying the whole process of finding their special gown.
In the midst of Trench's big change, her husband James also decided he needed to change the pace of his life. Previously a director of branches of Specsavers, he opened an internet business supplying all the majorbrand contact lenses direct to the public from his website.
Trench admits that opening a bridal store was a risky move, but she insists that it was the best decision she has ever made.
"I am very busy but it is a different type of busy. Once you take stress out of the equation it makes a massive difference. James had been working crazy hours and I felt ground down in the end.
"This is a completely new way of life. I have so much energy now. It is quite difficult to find a job you love so I consider myself to be extremely lucky. I used to hear stories from customers in Specsavers, but every bride really is different.
"I am as stress-free and easygoing as you can get now. I enjoyed being an optician but it is from a different life now. Sometimes people will ask me something about their eyes and I have to think twice about it. It is as if I have almost forgotten that I was an optician."