Work We Do: Lindsay Finter, North Fork Bridal Shoppe

I’m Lindsay Finter. I’m the owner at North Fork Bridal at the Shoppes at East Wind. We’ve been here since the very beginning. The grand opening was last October, so we are a little more than a year old now. 

Every day is different, but we come in, we have brides on the schedule. We go over what they want and what they’re looking for, what kind of wedding they want to have and we think about what would they like. What kind of dress would suit them?

Then we pull a few dresses and then we just get them going. We put them in a dress, give them that bride feeling and go from there with what they like and they don’t like.

I was getting married six years ago and I went bridal shopping and I thought, I saw all these shows on TV and I thought it was going to be this great experience. Everywhere I went I just felt like something was missing. I was always into fashion and I was like, you know, I would like to open a store because it would really be nice to give everyone that experience that I thought it would be like.

I like that you never know what’s going to happen. You read a description of a bride and we say she’ll definitely love this dress and she comes in and what she thinks she wants and what she actually wants you kind of have to hone in on it and figure it out. And I love when they have an expression of “oh my goodness, this is the one,” crying, when it’s the total opposite of what they told us they wanted. It makes it fun.

It’s interesting getting into a bride’s mind because sometimes they don’t know what they want so we have to get a sense of their personality.

We do try on the dresses, too, and that’s really fun. I love that part. When we get new dresses, I want to see how it fits. Who doesn’t want to wear wedding dresses every day?

I was born and raised in Wading River. It’s nice to be a small community.

It’s an important time in their life and it’s nice to be a part of it. I love when they send the pictures when their weddings actually happen.

I love to see how it all turned out. It’s nice to be a part of that journey.

“The Work We Do” is a Riverhead News-Review multimedia project profiling workers on the North Fork. It is made possible by Peconic Landing. See more photos on Instagram @riverheadnewsreview.