From prom to wedding

continued

front of Walmart.

One daughter is a junior at Grand Valley and the other is a sophomore at Bowling Green. While their younger brother is still at Saline High, Holding knows herself well and so does her husband, Brent, a pilot for US Airways. With their empty nest looming, Brent encouraged her to start something that's all her own.

Holding has always worked outside the home, starting off as a flight attendant and, over ten years, working her way up to management. But that job required too much traveling, so she switched to real estate and enjoyed it for a number of years--"I even did okay through the recent economic downturn," she says. But that industry had its own frustrations, so when her husband encouraged her to find something new, she recalled a cherished friend from Pennsylvania, where she used to live, who happily owned a bridal boutique.

Holding joined online forums about the bridal industry, read blogs, and even made cold calls to bridal boutiques across the country. "What do you do?" she'd ask other business owners, "Where do you get the dresses?" One especially helpful owner in Minnesota even invited her and a friend, Tracey Skidmore, to come there and learn more about the bridal business. A client of Holding's back when she sold real estate, Skidmore will manage the boutique, which in August was targeting a September 10 opening date.