UNVEILING RAVINIA BRIDAL

As owner of the nascent Ravinia Bridal—a curated sample boutique in the Ravinia district of Highland Park—nothing thrills Highland Park native Bonnie Wegner more than guiding a future bride to the dream gown.

But Wegner knows there’s a bigger picture, so she zooms out with a warm reminder for each client.

“I tell them, ‘The dress is not the most important part of your wedding day; every day after is,’” says the 60-year-old Wegner, who opened Ravinia Bridal in early April. “I got married on a mid-December day. I wore a short dress; nothing fancy. I didn’t have the wedding dress of my dreams, but I had the marriage of my dreams.”

Bonnie, a 1982 Highland Park High School graduate, married Kevin, a Carl Sandburg High School graduate, 37 years ago. A former General Motors executive in the finance department and assistant superintendent for an Illinois school district, Kevin passed away five years ago after a nearly 10- year battle with cancer. The couple had opened The Bridal Boutique of Naperville in 2006, and, beginning in 2015, collaborated with their daughter Alexa to open and run Mount Pleasant Bridal in a suburb of Charleston, South Carolina.

The former shop was sold in 2019; the latter ceased operations in 2020, the same year in which Wegner moved back to Highland Park.

Both stores had similar strong points—personalized attention, excellent service, and great gowns at great prices.

After five years of retirement, Wegner got the itch to return to the bridal wear field this past January, when she accompanied a friend who was looking for a mother-of-the-bride dress.

“I saw sample gowns—that got me thinking,” Wegner recalls. “Soon after that, I got my nails done at Anuk Nails in the Ravinia district and saw this place (at 729 St. Johns Avenue) was up for rent. And I live right around the corner from it, in what used to be Shelton’s Diner. I grew up in Highland Park, had a great childhood, and the Ravinia district means so much to me; I adore it.

“I want people to come to my bridal store in the Ravinia business district and then stick around to visit other wonderful businesses here.” Ravinia Bridal became Wegner’s opportunity to extend her calling in her cherished hometown.

Ravinia Bridal’s gowns are offered at reduced prices and available off-the-rack. Many bridal stores allow customers to try on sample gowns and order them to size for delivery between four and eight months. Ravinia Bridal works with various stores in the Chicagoland area to sell those sample gowns off-the-rack so a future bride can take it home that day. Ravinia Bridal curates each dress and makes suggestions on how to customize it. It also connects clients to various seamstresses to create a bride-to-be’s vision.

Ravinia Bridal has made available bridal wear created by many designers, including Allure, Essence of Australia, Demetrios, Madi Lane, Maggie Sottero, Casablanca, Calla Blanche, Enzoani, Willowby, and Mori Lee. Designers change frequently.

“I run Ravinia Bridal like a boutique,” Wegner says. “We take one bride and her entourage at a time. Our samples here were never worn, only tried on. An appointment lasts 90 minutes with a knowledgeable associate who will help a woman find her dream gown with ease.”

Bonnie Wegner’s wedding band has been replaced by a permanent “K” (for Kevin) tattoo. She also wears a necklace bearing a striking pendant of Kevin’s signature.

“We were both 22 when we got married, and we both wanted to be a 1950s married couple living in the 1980s,” says a grinning Wegner, whose other three children with Kevin, in addition to Alexa, are Mallory, Becky—a wedding planner who owns Chicago-based Simplicitee—and Tad. “We’d have to move every three years or so because of my husband’s job with GM. We were like an Army family.”

Tad was 10 when Bonnie Wegner, a self-described “serious housewife,” became Bonnie Wegner, the serious and successful entrepreneur, in Naperville, where the family lived for 15 years. Alexa watched her mother thrive at The Bridal Boutique of Naperville and told her one day, “I want to do what you do.”

“I absolutely loved being a housewife,” Bonnie says. “I’d set the table for dinner at 10 a.m. Meatloaf at our home was ‘meatlove.’ Years before I got into the bridal boutique industry, I was in love with bridal wear. I was a bridal junkie. I’d often to say to friends and acquaintances, ‘Show me your wedding video and show me your wedding book.’”

Four years after opening of The Bridal Boutique of Naperville, Wegner was grocery shopping on a Wednesday when she received a phone call from a customer who told her a fire at a bridal shop had consumed her friend’s wedding dress. The wedding date was two days away.

“I told them to meet me at my shop that day,” Wegner recounts. “The bride-to-be found a gown she loved. I then called a fabulous seamstress, Mary Burlingame, who worked through the next night. The dress was delivered in time on the day of the wedding.”

Wegner was a hairdresser for 18 months in her 20s, after studying interior design at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb and returning home to attend the Ippolito School of Cosmetology in 1984. Before then, from the age of 16 to the age of 20, she served in a number of capacities as a saleswoman at Gsell Pharmacy in Highland Park.

“I wasn’t feeling it,” Wegner says of her pursuit of a degree at NIU. “And I didn’t like being a hairdresser because I wasn’t excelling.” Today, she’s shining and exactly where she belongs.

“It’s an exciting time in my life,” Wegner says. “I love what I do and where I live. My four grandchildren all call me ‘Duchess,’ and a couple of years ago I made one of the best decisions of my life when I joined the committee that organized my 40th high school reunion.

“I made so many friends during that time, friends who would support me and cheer for me as I prepared to open Ravinia Bridal.”

Bridal Ravinia is located at 729 St. Johns Avenue in Highland Park. For more information and to book an appointment, visit raviniabridal.com or call 847-204-4093.