A THREE-generation family business, set up in Minehead two years ago to help curvier brides find their dream dresses, has been nominated for a top industry award.

Somerset Bridal, a mother, daughter and grand-daughter team, is the only business in the South and South West to be placed in the final six of the ‘best new bridal retailer’ category in the national Bridal Buyer Awards 2018.

Now Debbie Shelley and her mother Roberta Talbot, who set up and run the Minehead business together, will be attending the award ceremony in September – the ’Oscars of the bridal world,’ held in Harrogate alongside the Harrogate Bridal Show, the UK’s largest and oldest bridal buying event.

“We are so excited, over the moon,” said Debbie. “It just normalises being bigger and shows there are options for bigger girls.

“We’re in the confidence raising business. It’s about self-esteem – we never tell a bride to lose weight, we accept them as they are and try to get them to accept themselves as they are.

“Some brides are super-confident about their size and that’s brilliant, but a lot of the time they’ve had their self-esteem knocked.

“A lot of shops are snooty about size. We have girls who come here who have had horrible experiences and even thought about cancelling their weddings.”

Debbie, whose daughter Emily Hamnett-Harris also helps the business by running its social media from Bristol, was inspired to start it all up after she struggled to find a dress herself, when she married three years ago.

“I’m a size 20 and when I looked for my own wedding dress, it was really hard to find one – I hated the choices and couldn’t try any on, because the shops only had samples in sizes ten to 12,” she said.

“I was trying to arrange the wedding quickly because my father was dying and I had to just hold the dresses up and imagine how they would look, but it was all such a disappointment.”

Ninety-nine per cent of wedding shops in the UK only have samples in smaller sizes, or possibly go up to a 14. But with 16 being the average woman’s size, Debbie said she felt there was a clear gap in the market.