Well after being (very happily) based on the first and second floor of a building in  Colchester High Street for three years we’ve officially opened our new ground floor shop doors to the world and can now welcome our customers into 2300 sq feet of wedding gorgeousness over 4 floors!!  Now that we have the space and after many requests we are thrilled to be able to offer a Mother of the Bride range in our luxuriously decorated Mother of the Bride department.  Customer feedback about our small but beautifully formed own label collection has been wonderful so far, thanks to everyone who has already ordered their outfits with us. Our launch party on Sunday was absolutely fabulous!  Everyone loved our new look Bridesmaids and Menswear departments, it was such a buzz!! We’d really like to thank Dave of Dreamwave Events for his fabulous and funky tunes, Bespoke Caterers and their brilliant staff for their delicious canapes, Nick Reade for his outstanding magic and our very own N’swana for the beautiful songs that she sang! (check out the Abigail’s Collection facebook page for the You Tube Video of her amazing performance).  So, yes, the bubbles literally flowed and everyone complimented us on our beautiful shop - a few customers even threatened to move in, perhaps not a bad idea, if we all move in the staff can save on travel and my Doggie would probably get less lonely…. It was really lovely to see our customers past and present as well as getting the chance to catch up on a few wedding photo albums that we hadn’t yet seen …. Katie Elias’ album was amazing and Casey and Sean looked so wonderful (can’t wait to catch up after her honeymoon).  Special thanks goes to Laura, Wedding and Events Co-ordinater at Braxted Park for joining us with her Sister Katie and it was also really special to have Mark and Lesley Designer and manufacturer of their award winning label ‘Mark Lesley’  here to celebrate with us.  We’ve just received our Mark Lesley gowns in-store and are really excited to have them, they are simply gorgeous; fabulous structure, stunningly elegant fabrics and beautiful bead work!….  So many exciting things to report and so much happening …. actually the refurbishment has been thoroughly exhausting, all of the staff have had to work really hard and over long hours to get everything finished - it’s with huge thanks to them all (including my adorable Husband and Business Partner Rob) that we managed to get our new shop up and running and with minimal inconvenience to our customers so I’d like to end by saying thank you to all of our Customers for their support and especially to Rob, Kirsty, N’swana and Lisa you are the best ever and I am very lucky to work with you all! x

This month we decided it was time that we treated ourselves and headed out for some ‘team building’ dinner and drinks in town … some of you may know that Rob and I had the terrible sadness of losing a baby in July 09, at 5 months pregnant I had induced labour and medical termination of a baby girl who had been diagnosed with a severe genetic problem, sadly she would not have made it to full term – the whole thing was awful and without the support of our wonderful staff, family, friends, and customers we could not have managed through our very difficult time! We wanted to say a proper thank you to our staff and our evening out was partly a way of doing that. Other reasons to let our hair down included the celebration of Lisa’s placement at Essex Uni – congratulations Lisa, we know that you’ll do really well and look forward to updates in between all of those novels that you’ll be speed reading!! Kirsty was celebrating her year anniversary with us and we can’t believe that it has already been a year – it has literally flown by! So…. with dinner, drinks and dancing high on the agenda the five of us met at Bar 19. Supper at Zi-Zi’s was great fun, Kirsty proved that she is an unbelievable red hot chilli muncher! Hilariously Lauren’s competitive (and squiffy) side kicked in – she decided to try and be as impressive but literally bit off more than she could chew and dashed off to the toilet to rinse her burning mouth whilst leaving the rest of us in fits of giggles at the table! After Zi-Zi’s we headed to a few bars and saw lots of our lovely Brides and Grooms- here’s hoping that they weren’t put off by our off duty frivolities! Rob coped admirably with us girlies and was introduced to toffee flavoured vodka at the vodka bar on the way to Roberts Nightclub which was an eye opener for all concerned, even Rob danced round a handbag! Sunday was certainly a day of rest for the Abigail’s Collection Teamespecially after such a late finish. I am sure that I should have been more hung-over; perhaps it was the 3am cheesy chips that saved me! Thanks for a great night Guys, I look forward to next time but maybe with less chilli hey Lauren??!! …