She Built the Boutique She Couldn't Find: Elena and Szymon Kawa's Story

Elena Kawa went dress shopping and came home in tears. Three years later, brides from Seattle to the Fraser Valley come to her Clarke Street shop.

On Clarke Street, the rule at Ethereal Bridal is simple: one bride at a time. The whole room, and the light through the big windows, belongs to her and her people. Elena built it that way because she remembers the opposite.

In 2023, shopping for her own wedding dress in Vancouver, she felt rushed, one bride among many, pushed toward a sale. "I didn't feel like the important bride in the room," she says. She called her mom in tears.

Her mom had a question for her: you sent me pictures of beautiful Eastern European dresses, so why couldn't you find the dress of your dreams? Then, She joked about starting a business and bringing the dresses she could not find to Vancouver. Then, flying from Bulgaria to Thailand for Elena's wedding, her mom sat next to a Bulgarian woman who by chance, owned a bridal boutique. They got talking. And the joke became a reality. The woman shared her phone number, and offered advice on how to set up a boutique. She and Elena connected, she introduced Elena to a few Ukrainian designers and one of the biggest names in Russia. Ethereal Bridal was born.

That wedding is its own story. Elena and her husband Szymon met on eHarmony: coffee first, then a walk around the Vancouver seawall. "It felt like we knew each other for ages," Elena says. She lived downtown; he came from Coquitlam. They moved in together about six months later, and married about five years after meeting. "We weren't in a rush," Szymon says. "We just wanted to do it right."

The wedding was on Phi Phi Islands in Thailand, about 23 family members and a couple of friends, at a hotel that doesn't do weddings. Thailand was already family territory: Elena's parents spend about three months there every winter, and Szymon first met her family on one of those trips. The hotel made an exception: built them an arch, brought flowers in from the mainland, cooked the food. "That's the power of personal connection," Szymon says.

Back home, the timing worked. Elena, a marketing graduate with a hospitality background, was between jobs. Szymon had spent 20 years in construction, running his own business. His parents had an empty basement in Coquitlam. He built a try-on platform, mounted a mirror bought on Marketplace, and set up two racks. The first order was five dresses, picked by Elena and her mom. They planned to stay in the basement for six months. They stayed for two years.

The first day set the tone: two local brides came in, both said yes to their dresses, both cried. One was from Port Moody, one from Port Coquitlam. Word spread through Google and Instagram, out of a cul-de-sac with no foot traffic. Szymon's parents didn't take the business seriously at first. After six months of dresses arriving, they did. Now, he says, they're ecstatic.

But the basement had a ceiling, and they found it the day a mother walked out because she didn't want her daughter buying a dress from a basement. "We've reached our ceiling," Szymon says. They looked at spaces in Vancouver and didn't love them. Port Moody won: they set out to be the Tri-Cities' first bridal boutique, in a city that calls itself the City of the Arts, a community rather than downtown. Big windows were non-negotiable after the basement's dim light. Szymon designed and built the fit-out, racks, lighting, mirrors, and fitting room, and the two of them sewed the fitting-room curtains together.

Today the shop carries 155 gowns, from eight designers, all made in Europe, many Ukrainian, one Russian and one Spanish. Prices run from $1,500 to $9,500, and every dress is handmade to order, usually in five to seven months. The newest designer is Rosa Clará Couture, the fashion house's top tier, with gowns from $6,000 to $9,500. Ethereal is, the couple says, exclusively, the Pacific Northwest's and BC's representative for the Couture line. Nine dresses are on order, and a trunk show runs November 27 to December 6, with an additional 12 dresses from the newest collection. With more trunk shows to follow, twice a year.

Brides travel for it: from Seattle, from Ontario, from the Fraser Valley and the North Shore. Many say they came because of the reviews. And the private experience is the point. "You come in, you're the only bride," Elena says. "This whole space is for you."

Five years from now, she hopes people here say the shop is like no other, a place that changed bridal shopping, a place friends recommend to friends. The part of the story people usually miss, Szymon says, is how new it all is. Brides walk in and assume Ethereal has been here for years. "We're very new," he says. "But we love what we're doing and based on the feedback we get, brides love the experience we strive to provide."

They live in Coquitlam, and spend their free time in Port Moody, at Rocky Point, at the restaurants and breweries. The plan is to stay here even when they outgrow the space. "We fell in love with the community," Elena says.