And If There’s Fashion, It’s Likely Norah Doyle Will Be Staging Display

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From computer programmer to wedding boutique owner.
In started in 1997, says Norah Doyle of Rainbow’s End Weddings & More on Oneonta’s West End.
Today, just a dozen years later, the business organizes most of the fashion shows associated with bridal shows, including the second annual Foothills Bridal Expo from noon to 4 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 10, at the Foothills Performing Arts Center, the first of the year.
Norah had been doing wedding-related things on the side for many years, making favors and sewing. A bridal-shop owner she’d been working for wanted out to start a family.
So she asked herself, “Do I do it?  Or sit in my rocking chair years from now wishing I had done it?”
Needless to say, she went for it, opening Rainbow’s End at the 3200 Chestnut Street plaza.

Doyle has expanded her store twice since then.  The latest expansion – 600 square feet, four new dressing rooms and lots of display space – was completed just last weekend. She gave up a little storage space, but it will be “much easier to work on busy days now.”  More than 350 dresses needed some extra breathing room.
One of Rainbow’s End offerings is a large selection of dresses in many sizes. Whenever possible, Doyle asks designers for samples in sizes beyond the 6-12 that most companies consider standard.
“We have a good representation of plus-size dresses.  And they are usually the first to sell off the rack,” said Norah, adding that she has received calls from as far as Buffalo from brides who can’t find what she offers anywhere else.
When asked about changes in the industry over her dozen years in the business, Doyle reports the industry as a whole has remained pretty constant, but the way shoppers shop has changed.
“Five, 10 years ago, girls used to come in with a picture from a magazine and say, ‘This is my dress – order it for me.’ That was before the Information Superhighway really opened.  Girls were more decisive because they had less information available to them,” Doyle observed.
Now brides will not only NOT order just from a photo, but they have reservations ordering in a different color than the sample.
“Brides always want to see before they order it. But it doesn’t work that way, because the dresses are made to order,” Doyle said.  Besides, customers wouldn’t want to buy a dress that had been sent out and tried on and sent back 16 times before.
“You want it to be yours and yours alone,” Norah said.
Another slight change is that in an age of instant gratification, drive-through food, one-hour photo and glasses while you wait, brides don’t understand that it takes 3-6 months to get a dress ordered and into the store.
The dresses are usually made overseas, and while one may take just four weeks to sew and assemble, it may take eight weeks to get to Oneonta.
Other trends: The rising popularity of Maggie Sottero and Alfred Angel dresses, the use of color in wedding dresses, shorter bridesmaid dresses and brides choosing claret red or chocolate brown in their wedding colors.
Two nuggets of wisdom for brides:  “Don’t wait” until the last minute to order your dresses.  And, as Norah’s mom always told her, “Don’t sweat the small stuff.”
“Aside from falling head-first into the cake, if you get the wrong hors d’oeuvres or shade of dress, no one will know that is not what it was supposed to be. It will all go by in a blink of an eye.  If you stress about the small stuff you won’t be able to enjoy your day,” said Doyle.
 The busy time of year at Rainbow’s End starts right now, in January, as women who got engaged over the holidays and women hosting fall weddings shopping for their dresses.
In May, the activity switches to the service side of things, as the shop gets brides and their bridesmaids “ready to go out the door.”
In addition to the Foothills Expo, Norah is organizing fashion shows at Jan. 24 bridal show at the Best Western in Cobleskill; Sunday, Jan. 31 at the Howard Johnson’s, Norwich, and Sunday, Feb. 28, at The Otesaga.
Rainbow’s End Weddings and More will also host their own event on Super Bowl Sunday, Feb. 7, with tailgating before a Maggie Sottero Trunk Show. Details are still to come on this first time event.