Ottawa bride Melissa Jeurgensen calls herself a modest shopper rather than a thrifty one. She would rather spend more to make her wedding reception memorable for her 120 guests or save it for a down payment on a house than blow it on her bridal gown.

Budget is pretty important, the 27-year-old acknowledges. Say Yes To The Dress scares me. Its like these dresses are $3,000 at the low end. And then its up to $50,000. Its just crazy. Its not reality.

So its perhaps not surprising that when Jeurgensens mom flies to Ottawa to help her pick out a dress for her August wedding in her hometown of Kelowna, BC, their first stop will be the new Davids Bridal store at the Ottawa Train Yards.

Bridal industry insiders and the US business press have dubbed Davids Bridal the Walmart of bridalwear.

Its true that the 60-year-old company, which boasts 310 stores in North America – including the new shop in Ottawa – is a Goliath. Onethird of all brides in the US are outfitted at Davids, about 400,000 to 500,000 a year. And theyre frugal, those Davids brides. While the average expenditure on a dress in the US is about $1,300, the most a Davids bride can spend on a dress is $1,500 for a gown from the exclusive White by Vera Wang line.

Like Walmart, price is one of the reasons Davids is tough competition. With a tight grip on the supply chain and enormous volume, the Philadelphia-based chain offers sale prices as low as $99.

Even before Davids opened at the Train Yards last week – Mayor Jim Watson was at the ribbon-cutting – many local brides were trekking to the chains stores in upstate New York in search of a bargain. Its no wonder Canadas homegrown wedding industry is feeling jittery.

Jeurgensen doesnt think of Davids as the Walmart of bridal shops. They still carry Vera Wang. Its not the top Vera Wang, but its still her designs.

She has something strapless in mind for her dress, with an A-line skirt and perhaps a bit of beading. I would like to spend less than $1,000. I have friends who spent less, and their dresses were stunning. If she sees something she really likes, shell push her budget to $1,500.

The Train Yards store is the fourth Davids to open in Canada. Two opened in the Toronto area last year and one in Winnipeg two weeks ago, with a fifth scheduled to open in Edmonton later this year.

Craig Debenham, vice-president of stores for Davids, says the chain took a good part of its 60 years of life to develop its business model. It doesnt see itself as the Walmart of bridalwear, he says.

We are what we call a ready for you business. A bride can find a gown in her size, her style, her colour. Instead of taking up to six months to custom-order a dress from a sample, many brides can walk in and find exactly what they want and walk out with it.

The chains bridalwear includes its in-house Davids and Galina lines, as well as Oleg Cassini – the designer died in 2006, but his name still holds some lustre because of his association with Jacqueline Kennedy – and Wang, who signed on to lend her name to a line for Davids last year, to the consternation of highend boutiques who carry the real Vera Wang. (Theres enough tulle in one of the White for Vera Wangs ball gowns to run the length of a football field, Davids points out.)

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