More than the dress

Kelly Cook got married in a $19 dress from a Macy’s clearance rack.

She and her husband, Damon, had $100 in their checking account at the time, she said. There was no theme, website, or videographer, just 50 people gathered in a scorching-hot Houston backyard.

To Cook, she said, “it was the most perfect wedding ever.”

More than 30 years later, on a frigid March day in King of Prussia, she reminisced about her nuptials amid racks of lacy white gowns, fingertip veils, and colorful bridesmaid dresses at the David’s Bridal headquarters.

As the new CEO of the country’s largest bridal retailer, Cook is immersed in every aspect of an increasingly extravagant industry, in which celebrations can easily cost more than $40,000. With weddings becoming more of “a production,” as Cook describes it, she is working to transform David’s Bridal from an affordable-dress emporium to a one-stop wedding shop for all budgets.

The 59-year-old mother of five, grandma “Sugar” of two, is getting an assist from artificial intelligence. It powers David’s new digital wedding planner, Pearl, and has helped the company cut costs after emerging from its second bankruptcy in five years.

David’s recently rolled out an ad-sponsored media network, which includes a wedding-inspiration YouTube, and an original docuseries about out-of-the box celebrations. Last week the company unveiled a wholesale division. That means David’s designer dresses could soon be sold at boutiques, department stores, and other third-party retailers, blunting the tariff impact on some businesses.

With a soft Southern drawl often punctuated by boisterous laughter, Cook speaks with confidence about David’s Bridal’s tech-heavy rebirth, and about the human connections still at the heart of the 76-year-old company.

“Sometimes when you’re in a dark place, you think you’ve been buried, but you’ve actually been planted,” Cook said.

Since she took over in April, “we’ve opened up four new revenue divisions that weren’t here a year ago, and we still maintain this incredible enthusiasm for brides.”

Cook joined David’s Bridal as chief marketing officer in 2019, excited to play even a small role in customers’ big days.

“Her wedding day is the one day in her whole life she feels the most beautiful, the most surrounded by love,” said Cook, who is only the second woman to lead David’s. “Who else can say, ‘When she’s walking down the aisle, we get to walk with her in some way’?”

Cook said she had never felt such a rush in her career, which has included executive positions at DSW, Kmart, and Pier 1 Imports.

She feels the magic still, she said, when she texts with brides who have scheduled appointments at David’s stores nationwide. Cook gets the names and numbers from a randomly generated report each week, then reaches out to them personally, she said.

“It’s not an automated text. It’s actually from my phone,” Cook said. “I think it’s important to stay close to [brides] so I know, ‘What can we do better? How can we serve them better? Is there a dress they wanted we didn’t have?’”

Through these conversations, for example, Cook learned that some customers were looking for Vera Wang wedding gowns. So the CEO struck a deal with the high-end designer. That’s among several ways the company has expanded its offerings for budgets high and low.

While David’s still sells dresses for under $500, the company’s couture collection features gowns costing as much as $10,000. In Massachusetts and Florida, the retailer now operates luxury boutiques, where brides can pop a bottle of bubbly and browse a selection of more exclusive brands. Those stores are performing better than expected, Cook said.

Even the AI planner is getting fancy. Starting next month, Pearl will be equipped to assist brides with $100,000-plus wedding budgets, Cook said.

The in-store dress-shopping experience still reigns supreme for the vast majority of David’s brides, Cook said, and the company operates nearly 200 locations, including in Deptford, Feasterville, Maple Shade, and Plymouth Meeting.

Each day, Cook gets a list of the 10 stores with the strongest sales the day before, and she calls their managers. The Plymouth Meeting store shows up on that list every few weeks, she noted.

Before and after saying yes to the dress, many David’s brides now use AI for planning, Cook said. Pearl has amassed 85,000 users since it launched last summer, she said.

They ask: “If I’m getting married on the beach, what bridesmaids’ colors should I use? Does blue mess with the background of the ocean?” and the like.

After users take a quiz about their wedding, the platform creates a personalized 300-task to-do list and offers an “agentic AI concierge” to help with planning, Cook said.

Similar to other wedding sites, such as The Knot and Zola, Pearl allows users to make online registries and wedding websites, where guests can find details about the event. While The Knot uses AI to suggest vendors, Cook said Pearl is the only such site with a proprietary AI system.

Pearl is free and does not require a David’s Bridal purchase, though users are encouraged to buy dresses, shoes, accessories, and other wedding, honeymoon, and even household items through the platform.

“We want to sell you all the products you need for that entire journey,” Cook said. “The bride alone is purchasing 18 outfits. It’s not just a wedding gown. It’s cowboy boots. It’s house shoes. It’s a dance shoe.”

Amid all her optimism, Cook is honest, too, about the risks of changing too much too fast.

She was reminded of these pitfalls soon after taking over as CEO. On a Friday night last spring, Cook sat on her couch, sipping a glass of wine and scrolling TikTok.

“All of a sudden, I see this beautiful ad. I can hear the voice. It’s David’s Bridal,” Cook said, opening her laptop. “It’s gorgeous, and I’m like, ‘Go, team, go!’”

Then, “at the very end of the video, I saw this,” Cook said, turning her screen to display a screenshot of the ad. It shows a close-up of a bride and groom about to kiss, a veil fluttering across their faces.

In front of the photo are two words: “David’s Bridle.”

Cook laughs about the mistake now. But in the moment, “I lost 10 years off my life,” Cook said. “That was our very first full-AI TikTok video,” and they had bypassed the quality assurance check.

Looking back, Cook said she was too aggressive in her rollout of the David’s Bridal strategic AI plan, which executives call “Aisle to Algorithm.”

The digital infrastructure behind Pearl couldn’t keep up with the pace at which David’s Bridal was uploading data and onboarding third-party brands, Cook said.

As a result, more than 100 companies who want to sell products to brides and grooms remain in a queue to be added to the e-commerce platform, she said. David’s Bridal has onboarded about 40 companies in the past year, but Cook said “that’s too slow to meet demand. We need to be onboarding 40 a month.”

Still, AI has made the company more efficient and cut costs, Cook said. A five-person project management team, for example, was replaced by the AI assistant Claude, Cook said.

David’s Bridal also uses AI for some shoots, photographing dresses on a green mannequin and then placing models’ bodies in the dresses digitally.

Soon, executives said, customers will be able to upload their own photos to David’s Bridal website and see how a gown would look on them.

Eventually, Cook said she envisions brides using virtual-reality glasses to experience a simulated version of their wedding day at David’s stores.

“I want her to be able to say with her voice, ‘Yes, I want those bridesmaids’ dresses, change those flowers to purple, change the theme to whatever,’ and it will automatically integrate her Pearl Planner and make the purchases for her with the best deal available,” Cook said. “I don’t think we’re that far away.”

These changes are critical to the company’s post-bankruptcy comeback, Cook said.

Even after filing for Chapter 11 protection in 2018 and again in 2023, “we had a strong brand,” Cook said. “We sold a lot of gowns.”

“We had to diversify revenue, had to bring costs down, and we had to create shareholder value, bottom line.”

CION Investment Group bought David’s Bridal for $20 million in 2023. Since then, the retailer has reduced its store count and moved its headquarters from a building it owned in Conshohocken to a smaller leased space in King of Prussia.

David’s is a private company, and does not publicly disclose its finances. But Cook said she is confident the company will not be filing for bankruptcy again anytime soon.

“We have momentum in every key area,” Cook said. “We have a huge pipeline of partners wanting to participate. That tells me that we’re providing something that they can’t get elsewhere.”

Most importantly, she added, “we will pivot if we screw up.”

She doesn’t see David’s Bridal pivoting from the Philadelphia market, which it has called home for more than two decades.

“We really like it here. Our employees love it here,” said Cook, who splits her time between King of Prussia and her family’s ranch near Lufkin, Texas.

“But I’m not an Eagles fan,” Cook added with a laugh. “I’m a Houston Texans fan. I won’t cross that line. But we both hate the Cowboys.”