Bank Holiday Special Offer

We all love bank holiday's and here at Bridal Gems we're no different. To celebrate the last holiday here in the UK between now and Christmas, we're giving a massive 20% discount of all internet orders over £30. The offer will only last until Monday night so get your order in fast, to avail of the discount simply enter the discount code ABH27 during checkout.

Special Delivery 'v' Recorded Delivery

With the current Royal Mail Strike we're getting more enquiries than usual about the differences between recorded delivery and special delivery. Firstly I'll cover it from Royal Mails' point of view. Recorded delivery items are treated in exactly the same way as normal mail, except that upon delivery the postman gets a signature from the recipient, or if no ones available to sign for it, it's returned to the local delivery office for collection or re-delivery. Special delivery on the other hand is tracked right through the delivery system by means of a bar code which is scanned through out the journey from dispatch to delivery. The special delivery service we use also guarantees delivery the next working day after posting. There are of coarse several other differences in the services, such as compensation levels and what types of things can be carried.
At our end we treat both order types slightly different. The special delivery items have to be brought individually to the post office, where as recorded items are collected in bulk by Royal Mail. This obviously makes the special delivery service much more time consuming which is why it's more expensive than standard recorded delivery.
We do our best to dispatch special delivery items within 24 hours of receiving the order but we can't guarantee this, so it's best to give us a call and check when we can get your order to you. If the order is urgent we can usually make time to get it packed and posted.

Postal Strike Continues

The Royal Mail postal strike which has been ongoing for the past few weeks is continuing. We're noticing some small delays in orders but nothing too serious, and we're working hard to get orders posted quickly and following Royal Mail's guidelines on when is best to post. The situation is a little further confused by the fact that postal workers in Northern Ireland are striking on different days which means we can sometimes get orders collected here when they wouldn't be in the rest of the UK, and obviously the down side is that some days when work is going on as normal in the rest of the UK, we've no collections here. We have been actively updating the Royal Mail Strike page and will keep doing so until the situations resolved.
We are doing everything possible to minimize disruption and do hope it doesn't cause to much inconvenience.

Hen Night

We've added a few new hen night products to both the Hen Night Shop and the hen night section of Bridal Gems. The new range includes:

• Single Use Cameras
• Name Badges
• Dare Cards
• Pink Feather Boas
• "L" Plate Boppers

The new range is exceptionally high quality and very competitively priced.

Bank Transfer Payment

We've decide to stop accepting BACS bank transfer payments through the website. This wasn't all that difficult a decision because since we started to accept online credit/debit card payments virtually no one used the facility and to be honest we found it only cluttered up and confused the checkout page. We can of coarse still accept BACS transfers and if anyone still wants to pay be this method they should contact us.
Just on the payment side of things we've made a small change the the checkout page and added debit cards to the list of accepted payments, we did always accept debit cards but for some reason they were not listed separate from credit cards which just occasionally caused confusion. The payment option is now credit/debit card.

Continued Royal Mail Strike Action

Royal mail workers are to continue their strike action on Thursday 12th and Friday 13th of July. Customers can expect some delays to orders over this period. The main problems will be for customers expecting to receive orders on Friday. Any orders placed over or just before the strike period will be packed as normal but we won't be able to dispatch them until after the strike.
Again we'd like to offer our apologies for the inconvenience caused and hope it doesn't upset your plans to much.
For more information visit our Royal Mail Strike page.

Returns Policy Change

We've made a few minor changes to our returns policy, we've changed the return address and made the actual wording of the policy a little clearer. The basic principles of the returns policy are pretty much unchanged. The main reason for the change is the security issues involved in addressing packages to "Bridal Gems". Some time ago we realised having "Bridal Gems" written on the packages we send out, greatly increased the chances of the package going missing in the post, so we dropped all reference to it and the rate of loss fell. The new return address simply puts "Amanda Carson" in place of "Bridal Gems" which will hopefully help protect our customers returns.
The full Postage and Returns policy can be found here: Bridal Gems Returns Policy

Royal Mail Strike

As you're probably aware Royal Mail postal workers are going on strike on Friday 29th June 2007. Because of this, we'll not be able to post out any orders on Friday, we do plan however to process and pack as normal and will be bringing the mail directly to Royal Mail on Saturday morning, which will hopefully be processed for delivery at the beginning of the week.
We'd like to apologise for any inconvenience this may cause and hope we can keep the disruption to a minimum by managing our dispatch system as efficiently as possible.

Unfortunately being based in Northern Ireland there's no cost effective alternative to Royal Mail and we're stuck with them for now. If the situation does escalate, we'll have no choice but to look for alternative delivery options and hope that we can absorb the extra costs and still remain competitive. For more information on the Royal Mail Strike visit our website

Children's tiaras and accessories.

An area of "Bridal Gems" that's been a little neglected over the past few years is our kids range of accessories. Although we've always done a few tiaras that can be adjusted to fit anyone from 4 years up, it's only now that we've started to do a range specially selected for the younger members of the wedding party.


The headbands above are just a few of the new range, with a choice of popular colours available. We've also introduced some small tiara combs like the one below.


We plan to extend the range further over the next few months and maybe even have a separate kids section on the site. If you have any comments or suggestions please let us know.

Bridal Gems Discount Coupons

We've finally got round to adding the discount coupon system to the site. It's a pretty straight forward system where the customer is given a code to enter during checkout, this then applies a discount to the order total. The code can be set up to allow any type of discount, a fixed value, postage discount or a percentage discount. To roll the system out we're posting a coupon out with all orders, so repeat customers can get a discount off their next order.
As a thank you to all our blog readers we'd like to offer you a free code so you can get a small discount off your next purchase, just enter the code below during checkout and you'll get 10% off the order.
Discount Coupon Code: BL31
This is a single use code, the full terms and conditions of use can be found on the Terms & Conditions page.


From time to time we'll run bank holiday or weekend promos, we'll post details both here on the blog and at the top of the site so you can easily see if there's any offers currently running.

Hen Night Shop

With the success of the hen night section on Bridal Gems, we've decided to build a whole new Hen Night Shop . The new shop is located at www.toys-central.co.uk, we chose this domain as it was an existing part of the toys-central.com site and was somewhat under used. We hope you enjoy browsing through the new shop and can find what you're after. Pop a comment on here or drop us a note if you have any suggestions or comments about the new site.

Website Maintenance

The Bridal Gems website www.bridalgems.co.uk will be down for a few hours in the early hours of Wednesday 2nd May 2007. The maintenance is due to last for about 3-4 hours starting at approximately 01.00 GMT on Wednesday. We hope to be up and running again before breakfast time on Wednesday.
The work is in preparation for a new secure certificate we're going to be installing, the new cert will give us full 128 bit encryption through out the site when ever sensitive information needs to be entered.
We've tried to schedule this work for the quietest time, on the quietest day of the week, and hope it doesn't cause too much inconvenience.
The down time will be pretty fluid and some users might not notice any disruption, but as always it's best to err on the side of caution.

UK Wedding Directory

With the rapid growth of the Bridal Gems UK Wedding Directory, we've decided it's time to give it it's own seperate website. The new domain for the directory is www.ukweddingdirectory.info the directory itself hasn't changed and all previously listed sites are still there. Regular submissions are still free, and for a limited time we've reduced the cost of featured listings from £15.00 to £4.99 per year. Over the next few months we'll be building new features into the directory and have a whole new homepage planned with links to all sorts of useful wedding websites.

If you have a wedding related site you can add it to the directory here Submit URL

Bridal Gems Live Help

Our live help system is now discontinued, we provide all support via telephone and email currently, we may introduce live help again if there's demand.

Hen Night Fun

We plan to roll out our new Hen Night accessories by the beginning of March. We've introduced new lines and are planning on expanding it further over the next few months. We've a whole load of fun and exciting gear in the pipline at the usual "Bridal Gems" rock bottom prices. From Signature Tee Shirts @ just £8.99 to Flashing Boobs for under a fiver, we've got something for everyone.

We will of coarse be keeping the old favourites, like the plastic tiara and veil and the ever popular Learner kits. So why not drop by and have a look.

Hen Night Accessories.

Update from Bridal Gems

Well it's been almost a month since I posted on here and just thought I better drop by and say hello. The new year has started with a bang and we've all been busy packing orders and keeping the web site updated. The beginning of February has continued the same as January and the orders have been flowing in thick and fast. We did manage to get a few days earlier this month with some of our suppliers and are happy to announce the arrival of two completely new product ranges for later in the spring. The first and biggest is a range of new jewellery, the collection consists of about 24 new necklace and earring sets and half a dozen different matching bracelets. There are a couple of new tiaras in the range also, but as we have over 80 different styles already in our portfolio we didn't go to heavily on these. The second new range is the long awaited update to the Hen Night and accessories section of the site, we've got some super fun new novelties, and a few new wedding favour ranges. The first to arrive should be the hen night and accessories which will hopefully be online some time towards the end of February. The new jewellery collection is still in production but should be here by early April.
All in all it's a busy few months here and I don't expect to get as much time as I used to for updating the blog, I will however be sure to keep it refreshed with new news and information as often and possible.

A Quick Thank You

Just a quick word of thanks to those customers who visited us at the Everglades Hotel yesterday. The show was a huge success with hundreds of visitors enjoying the fashion shows and dozens of exhibits. It was great to meet some of you face to face and we really do hope you enjoyed our display.


Due to space restrictions we could only show part the range but it was great for customers to actually feel the quality of the products before buying, and the feedback at the show was very much appreciated.
We're now looking forward to our next outing (The Beechlawn House) where we hope to have an even better display with more products and a few specials not available on the website.

Beechlawn House Hotel - Wedding Show

Our latest confirmed wedding fair venue is the Beechlawn House Hotel in Dunmurry, just outside Belfast. The show is on Sunday 4th March 2007 from 1pm - 6pm and we'll be showing with a whole range of other quality wedding professionals. For more information on our show venues visit our Irish Wedding Shows site.

New 2007 Jewellery Range

Along with the old favourites from 2006, we're introducing some exciting new jewellery for 2007. The range will be introduced over the next few weeks on a rolling basis and will be available to purchase as soon as stock arrives. The main focus will be to increase the number of rhinestone bracelets as this has been an area in which we were light in 2006. There's a few new necklace sets and some tiaras also being added. We don't have any plans to discontinue any jewellery this year, however if supply of an items becomes difficult we might have to revise this.

I'd just like to take this opportunity to thank all our customer over the past year and wish you all a happy and prosperous New Year.

Nigel

Wedding Show Update

We've started finalising details of where we'll be showing in 2007, the first show is planned for the Everglades Hotel just outside Londonderry in Northern Ireland. The Everglades is a great 4 star hotel and a super wedding venue. As well as covering the Derry area, it also attracts brides from Donegal and all over the north west of Ireland. We'll be there on Sunday 14th January from 2-5 pm. We have more shows planned and will be anouncing them as soon as we finalise the details.
More information can be found here www.irish-wedding-shows.bridalgems.co.uk the most up to date info will be found here.