Since an invitation sets the tone for your wedding, you’ll want an invitation company with the most possibilities, the best customer service, and years of experience in the business. Fortunately, Las Vegas brides, Alligator Soup Stationery and Gift Boutique can offer every design from eclectic to elegant, all customized to your personal taste. In addition, the staff members, like owner Helen Edell, work to bring you the personal touch that many large corporations and computer-generated services can only hope to offer.
“It seems like a such a dream,” Helen Edell, shop owner, said at the most recent Bridal Spectacular bridal show. Alligator Soup Stationery, which is owned to this day by the same families who opened the boutique, has been serving Las Vegas brides since 1982. “The brides whose weddings we did over 25 years ago … now we’re doing their children’s wedding invitations.”
Alligator Soup also provides stationery for many important events in between, from baby announcements to birthday parties to bar mitzvahs to bridal showers.
“It’s a good feeling to know we’re part of so many life-cycle events,” Edell said. “Now there aren’t too many businesses who can tote that.”
At Alligator Soup Stationery, every bride and groom have the opportunity to make their wedding invitations unique. At a scheduled consultation, a bride can flip through volumes of wedding invitation designs. Then, she can either choose a design in its entirety or customize any aspects. By looking through binders and books, a bride can notice the quality of the paper, the texture of the ribbon, and even the impression of the font. While these features are often lost on a computer screen, Alligator Soup Stationery’s approach allows a bride to truly know what she’s ordering.
“We’ll help you and guide you, so that it really becomes what you want it to be,” Edell said. “An invitation and a wedding should be a reflection of a bride and groom.”
In addition to their customizable variety of designs, fonts, papers, ribbons, and colors, Alligator Soup Stationery provides excellent customer service. Whether a bride needs confirmation of wedding invitation etiquette or wants a particular width of ribbon ordered, Edell is willing to do everything within her power to ensure a customer’s contentment.
“Sometimes [choosing wedding invitations] can be a very touchy and difficult process,” Edell said, acknowledging the occasional disagreement between a bride and her family over invitation details. But “we provide a shoulder and a box of tissues, and many a time we helped brides and their families get through, and with respect to all parties,” she said.
To make wedding planning easier for brides, Alligator Soup Stationery also offers additional services. For example, staff members can demonstrate how to properly insert an invitation, reply card, and reply envelope into the invitation’s envelope. For a fee, employees can even impeccably stuff, address, and stamp envelopes. Then, they’ll mail the wedding invitations too. “It’s all up to the customer—what their budgets can afford and what they would like us to do,” Edell said.
In an era where technology has the globe in its grip, as Edell mentioned at her bridal show booth, customer service is often lacking. But this cannot be said of Alligator Soup. Rather, Alligator Soup Stationery provides a personal touch and helping hand to every bride who sets foot in the one-of-a-kind boutique. That’s why, 28 years later, this little shop with big personality is where many Las Vegas brides choose their wedding invitations.
For more information on Alligator Soup Stationery and Gift Boutique, please visit their web site. For a consultation, call 702-804-0544 for the West Sahara location or 702-367-0999 for the Green Valley location.
Visit Bridal Spectacular’s web site to view additional Las Vegas wedding invitation shops and services. Continue to check back this month as the Bridal Spectacular blog brings you up-to-date information from local wedding professionals to help you in your Las Vegas wedding planning.
Author: Allyson Siwajian © 2010
Photographs: Allyson Siwajian