Sisters Ella Kinsland and Kara Leonard founded White Dresses to provide high-end bridal gowns to Southeastern brides who crave a memorable experience and impeccable service.
Ella Kinsland has always loved weddings. She was known as the church flower girl and always took this position very seriously – making sure to toss the perfect amount of petals with each step. Not only did Ella participate as a flower girl in many weddings around town – she was often the bride in backyard weddings she planned and performed with her childhood friends and cousins. At age 13, Ella created her first wedding binder – organized with color-coded tabs to denote what type of wedding each section represented. After attending a fine arts high school, Ella went on to Auburn to pursue a journalism degree. While she adored writing feature stories, her guilty pleasure was reading all of the wedding announcements (often times stealing the forms from the receptionist to plug into the computer herself). Her organizational skills and attention to detail led her to Alabama, where she graduated with her law degree. Ella merged her love for weddings with her great business sense to help realize her lifelong dream of opening a bridal store.
Kara Leonard was born a fashionista. From the time she was little, she kept up with the latest fashions and developed a strong sense of personal style. At the age of 6, she designed her first outfit, which she helped sew with her grandmother. This love of design and obsession with clothing led Kara straight into the fashion design program at Savannah College of Art & Design. After transferring to Alabama, Kara maintained her love of design – creating custom cocktail dresses that she sold online. Kara’s deep understanding of fabrics, silhouettes, and how to dress different shapes has carried over to White Dresses, where she serves as the main decision maker on brands to carry within the store and dress selections to bring to the South from each designer. After dabbling in selling her own brand, Kara teamed up with her sister to help bring gorgeous gowns to couture loving brides in North Alabama.
Whether it is your first time shopping with White Dresses or you are picking up the white dress you will wear on your wedding day, each interaction you have with a member of the White Dresses team will be filled with enthusiasm and a desire to make you feel perfect for your special day. It is our promise and goal to help make the day you find your perfect white dress just as special as the day you walk down the aisle in it.