David’s Bridal is the largest bridal store chain in the US—but when the question’s popped, it’s not the David’s Bridal website, but Pinterest, that soon-to-be brides turn to first to start planning their big day.

According to the social network’s own research, 40 million people turn to Pinterest every year for guidance across their wedding planning journey. These people, Pinterest says, also start using Pinterest earlier than other wedding sites, and that Pinners (as Pinterest users are called) are typically more “hands-on” wedding planners than non-Pinners.

The stats certainly attest to this, with 900 million wedding-related Pins being saved annually, and 378 million wedding-related searches being conducted on the platform every single year. But perhaps the most revealing figure of all is this one: 81% of engaged Pinners say that they started planning on Pinterest before the question was even popped.

For anyone in the bridal business observing what a powerful destination Pinterest clearly is for tens of millions of people throughout the wedding planning process, retailers may be firing out ideas like confetti for how they might leverage the platform for growth. In fact, this is how the partnership between Pinterest and David’s Bridal was born.

A Celebration of Curation

Shortly before Valentine’s Day this year, David’s Bridal launched a first-of-its-kind bridal quiz in combination with every fiancé’s favorite platform. The campaign is called “Be Your Own Bride,” and helps brides-to-be start planning all the dreamy details of their perfect wedding on Pinterest.

Users simply head to the David’s Bridal website and answer seven simple questions about how they envision their perfect wedding (colors, dress styles, themes), and also slightly more stylized questions, like, “Who’s your favorite celebrity bride?” and “What’s the moment you can’t wait for?” It even asks you to give the wedding date and whose names should be on the invitations.

As soon as the user completes this fun questionnaire, they hit the button, and, Voila! A personalized Pinterest board is generated for them on their Pinterest account, brimming with content including things like wedding dress styles, gifts and favors, personalized invitations, bridal party color palettes, and inspirational quotes – all completely customized to the user’s own style and full of inspiration for the Big Day.

What’s more, if a user falls in love with a wedding dress, she can immediately and seamlessly book an appointment at her local David’s Bridal store simply by clicking on the Pin, which will take her to the associated product page on the DB website where bookings can be made.

Sam Norpel, VP of commerce at David's Bridal, spoke to DMN in an email interview. “We know Pinterest is the first place the bride goes after she gets engaged – before she's engaged actually – to begin curating ideas for her big day,” she said. “She turns to the platform for ideas on her dress, her venue, and the overall look and feel of her wedding, and this campaign allows us to help provide a personalized point of view for her.”

Inspiring Customers to Say Yes to a Dress

The “Be Your Own Bride” campaign from David’s Bridal is one that encourages women to put their own personal spin on their wedding plans and designs. Now that this fun and fluid quiz has been added, this has become even easier for the retailer’s customers to accomplish. And the “fun” part of it can’t be ignored. Indeed, the ultimate goal of the campaign is not only to ease the process of early wedding planning through the almost-immediate delivery of personalized content to the customer, but to evoke an emotional response as well.

The Pinterest board that is generated is of course – as all things are on Pinterest – visually evocative. Users can see what their dress might look like, what their invitations might look like, what their hair, makeup, flowers and jewelry might look like. It’s exciting. It’s visual. It’s inspiring. “One of the most important things we wanted to create was an experience that was aspirational, and something [Pinners] can go out and do in the real world,” said Raashi Rosenberger, creative strategy lead for the East Coast at Pinterest Studio.

Dancing with Data

But it wasn’t easy to pull off. Indeed, David’s Bridal had to work closely with Pinterest in order to ensure that it had the correct data sets that would both inform the questions that were selected for the quiz, and that the most personalized content would be pulled across to the personalized Pinterest boards that are generated.

“We know our bride spends a lot of time on the [Pinterest]. Leveraging the data we have, both from customer insights we've done as a company and from Pinterest, was a huge part of our consideration in building the quiz, from the types of questions we asked to the kinds of creative we included in the Pin outputs,” Norpal said.

Rosenberger added: “This was a very impressive use of the Pinterest developer API. We saw that the personalization that DB was able to use was a really nice activation of the technical features that we offer. [Brides] also had a Pin where they could actually schedule an appointment to go and get a dress fitting at David's Bridal, so there's a really nice call to action there.”

More Brides, More Engagement

Still in its infancy, the ultimate impact on David’s Bridal revenues from the Pinterest partnership is yet to be seen. However, Rosenberger says that it has already been driving lots of new organic traffic and engagement their way. “[David's Bridal] has seen incredible organic engagement since the campaign kicked off, which is what they were looking for,” she said. And for David’s Bridal, this seems to be the positive result the retailer was after.

The last word goes to Sam Norpel.

“Success for us is hearing that our brides are finding the quiz to be useful and fun.”