You May Monetise the Bride

At influencer Brigette Pheloung’s St. Barths bachelorette weekend, the benefactor was as much of a star as the bride herself.

The trip was sponsored by beauty tech start-up Swan Beauty, which provided a private jet to transport Pheloung, who goes by the moniker @acquiredstyle online, and her 16 guests (which included a number of creators with their own massive audiences) to the Caribbean hotspot, three nights at a villa, as well as $795 Swan Beauty AI-enabled mirrors on the jet and throughout the house. Thanks to that weekend, Swan, a relatively unknown company that just launched in January, saw 28,000 new users sign up on its website, and its Google search traffic rise 5,000 percent in the week following.

It was also a boon for Pheloung’s own apparel brand Phe Phe, co-founded by her twin sister (and fellow creator) Danielle. Throughout the weekend, the girls wore pieces from Phe Phe’s St. Barths collection, which dropped soon after the trip. The majority of items sold out within 20 minutes, according to the brand.

“People were looking from the outside, like, ‘What are these pieces?’” said Pheloung. “It was a really fun, organic way to grab the attention of new customers.”

While nuptials of the rich and famous have long been attention fodder, patronage by brands was usually reserved to the likes of A-listers like Kourtney Kardashian, whose 2022 wedding to Travis Barker “hosted” by Dolce & Gabbana drove $10.8 million in earned media value for the fashion house, according to influencer marketing platform CreatorIQ. But in 2026, interest has reached a new high — and expanded well beyond celebrities. Weddings in general are becoming bigger productions, with the average US wedding costing over 20 percent more than pre-pandemic, according to The Knot.

Influencers and even ordinary brides have realised that their bridal journeys are attention bait and are documenting accordingly, landing partnerships along the way. Brands are working with brides-to-be on design collaborations and custom looks, gifting their wedding parties or, like Swan Beauty, sponsoring an entire wedding event.

After getting engaged in May 2025, fashion creator Sara Walker immediately received “more inbound gifting opportunities,” including offers for handbags, veils and men’s loafers for her fiancé. While she’s not working with brand partners on her big day, she’s found other ways to capitalise on her bridal era, following up a 2025 design collaboration with Reformation by releasing a white version of the dress she created with the retailer.

Many of those brand placements (or the moments that make them worthy of them) are facilitated by bridal stylists, content creators and wedding publicists. Those once niche or non-existent specialists have become increasingly mainstream as more brides look to maximise their potential for brand partnerships and editorial coverage — the holy grail of which is a Vogue feature.

“[Brides] are the most engaged consumers of not only luxury, but also of social media,” said Gabrielle Katz, founder of bridal PR agency Accent Bridal. She advises, however, that coverage and content — especially for such an emotional time — needs to be organic and genuine “in a world where everything is so manufactured and so orchestrated.”

The Brand Opportunity

With the hopes of being the next Sofia Richie Grainge, who turned her viral wedding into a never-ending slew of brand deals, today’s content creators and entrepreneurs view a high-profile wedding as a once-in-a-lifetime chance to grow their follower count, brand deal pipeline or their own label’s sales.

“Pitching and getting features out of my wedding is very important to me, and I’ll be making decisions around that,” said embroidery brand Abbode founder Abby Price, who got engaged in April. “It all works together as me as an individual, my role in my business and the wedding.”

Already, 25 percent of Abbode’s business is wedding-related, from bachelorette party favours — which tend to have a higher average order value — to embroidered lingerie. The brand has also partnered with hotels like Fouquet’s on custom embroidery for high-profile engagements for brides like Pheloung and model Elsa Hosk; a “fiancé” tank top made for Pheloung became a top-seller in the week following her engagement, alongside the brand’s “Mrs.” tank.

Even brides who previously didn’t have a public platform are using their bridal moments to propel newfound content creation careers.

“A lot of our clients who have gotten engaged had a unique ring, and then their proposal, or their video about their ring, goes viral, and that kind of explodes them into the world of bridal content creation,” said Olivia Landau, founder of jeweller The Clear Cut.

Bridal content is also influencing how retailers are curating their assortment. Justin Alexander Group, which owns and licenses several bridal brands, worked with creator Madeleine White on her viral floral Viktor&Rolf wedding gown, which drove massive interest in the silhouette.

“There was a massive shift in gravitation, and it helped establish Viktor&Rolf’s DNA in the wedding space,” said Justin Warshaw, lead designer and chief executive at Justin Alexander Group.

The Bridal PR Machine

As creator content takes centre stage in broadcasting the bridal journey, a slew of cottage industries has emerged to support couples in the lead-up to their big day.

Bridal PR, for instance, has become a “whole new field” in recent years, said celebrity and bridal stylist Micaela Erlanger, with A-listers and smaller creators alike hiring publicists who specialise in weddings to help them score editorial coverage.

A number of agencies have launched or expanded to meet the demand. Katz, who founded the fashion PR firm Accent Projects in 2021, launched a parallel business, Accent Bridal in 2025. It applies a similar approach to Katz’s work at Accent Projects, introducing clients to her network of designers, photographers and more to help brides craft a more editorial-worthy wedding, even scoring them invitations to Bridal Fashion Week in New York. It also allowed her to assist brands like A.L.C. and Hervé Leger interested in expanding into the sector, helping with merchandising their collections to “look more bridal,” said Katz.

“What we thought was going to be for brides, actually, we can apply for brands,” she added.

Agencies that do not specialise in bridal are getting involved too. In April — the unofficial kick-off of wedding season — PR firm Chrissy Walker sent out an email blast spotlighting the recently engaged talent in its roster it said were “ready for wedding partnerships, content series, and press opportunities.” The agency had already managed several wedding-adjacent brand relationships for its clients, including bringing on partners like Ultra Violette, Black Girl Sunscreen and Fenty Beauty for client Mercedes Benson’s bachelorette, and securing loans from jeweller Stephanie Gottlieb and gifts from Mejuri for creator Tiffany Wang’s wedding.

Beyond publicists, wedding stylists have taken off. While many can provide designer introductions like agencies, stylists also help brides navigate a space that has become increasingly overwhelming, with more events to dress for and brands to choose from than ever before. The goal is to create a wedding wardrobe that tells a story.

“[People want] a high-touch, thoughtful narrative,” said Erlanger. “Why wouldn’t you want that same thoughtfulness and care for wardrobe and anything that’s sort of forward-facing when your pictures are what live on long after the party?”

Brides are stitching together their own networks of specialists. Beauty creator Jade Lily, for example, hired Blue Jeans PR for publicity, but tapped content creation and management specialists Follow the Bride, who will be producing content for her on her wedding day. In addition to Blue Jeans, many partners, including her dress designer and Follow the Bride, will pitch her wedding to media outlets on her behalf, knowing the power of being tagged in a credits list on Vogue or wedding website Over the Moon.

“The cross-promotion amongst other creatives is a really powerful place to sit,” said Erlanger.

Those intersections are likely only going to continue to grow. Experts expect that the wedding boom is just beginning.

“I don’t think it’s going to hit a saturation point,” said Warshaw. “When you look at these creators, these celebrities, their wedding content is always the content that does the best.”