After months of planning and thinking about my boutique, I finally opened the door to customers on Friday 14th October and it has been absolutely lovely to meet my new customers.
To say last week was absolutely manic is an understatement. I don’t think I had more than four hours sleep a night and I know for a fact that I didn’t eat – not the healthiest of weeks at all and definitely not the best way to lose weight! However, it was a week of needs must. Circumstances meant that I was still painting the day before my preview and we were still pricing everything on the day of the preview itself. It wasn’t quite how I had planned my day to be but then it all came together in the end.
I have to thank my daughter and my friend who helped me hang our lovely lingerie and who both calmed my nerves when there was chaos all around. Yes I shed a few last minute tears as mirrors were being fixed at 5pm and the changing room curtains were hung at 6pm. Naively I had imagined that I would have everything up and in place by 4pm. I’d thought that I would be able to go home to shower and do something with my hair and have some time to decide what to wear,
But no I ran home at 6pm, brushed my hair and quickly pinned it up, washed, dressed in to something relatively smart and donned my leopard skin shoes. When I arrived back at the boutique, I shed a couple more tears. It was looking absolutely perfect. Just how I imagined it to be. Okay my stock room was piled high full of all sorts of boxes which needed to be sorted out, but the boutique itself was better than I had hoped.
The preview night was great fun. I’d decided on it being a ladies night only and I had booked a Butler in the Buff (who wasn’t technically in the Buff) to meet and greet my friends and family with a glass of bubbly. He was brilliant. And my family and friends loved the boutique. When they had all gone home, I sat on the chair alone for the first time in what seemed days and shed a few more tears!! This time in sheer happiness and relief that I had finally got there. The months of hard work – of thinking and planning and painting and decorating, of visiting trade shows and ordering stock, of helping pull down ceilings and take plaster of walls and meeting suppliers – had finally brought me to that moment.
And so Frillies is open. I can’t quite believe it but I am so pleased. I can’t thank my family and friends enough for putting up with me for the past few months and I can’t thank people enough for the help that they have given me in pulling it all together including my friend who helped design my logo. And another especially good friend who helped me with the shop fittings. It’s been such hard work but I am so pleased that I made the decision to do it. Who knows what will happen from here on in!!
