So grateful for all this year brought…. Helping to make the wedding day amazing for many couples, making contributions to our formal Giving Back program (“With Kindness, Helping Others”) and remembering an iconic figure in the wedding world, Yumi Katsura, who we lost too soon. I had the pleasure of collaborating with Yumi at the Japanese Bridal Association – Asian-Pacific Summit in New York City.

Yumi was a Japanese fashion designer who created over 650,000 dresses over the course of her career. She is credited with popularizing the “everyday” kimono in Japan and around the world.  She opened Japan’s first bridal store in Akasaka, Tokyo and established the Yumi Katsura Bridal Museum in Kobe, and later opened boutiques in Paris and New York. Yumi Katsura designed the Easter vestments worn by Pope John Paul II in 1993.  One of her dresses is in New York City’s Metropolitan Museum of Art‘s Costume Institute.  She holds the Guinness World Record for most pearls on a wedding dress: 13,262.  The wedding industry will miss her.