David’s Bridal exec has a warning for every CEO obsessed with AI’s return-on-investment

After years working in marketing positions at tech companies such as PayPal, Hootsuite, and Meta , Elina Vilk admits she wasn’t the most traditional hire for David’s Bridal. But when she came on as chief business officer in 2024, the 76-year-old dress seller was at the precipice of a major strategic shift that would require someone with Vilk’s expertise. In 2025, the company launched its “Aisle to Algorithm” program with the goal of turning David’s Bridal into an “asset-light, AI-powered business model” with a range of new offerings, including a wedding planning platform, an expanded retail media network, and an expansion into new categories such as menswear, accessories, and swimwear. David’s Bridal also announced an integration with Open AI’s ChatGPT and Microsoft’s Copilot agentic AI platforms to ensure the brand shows up where customers are searching. Vilk has been at the forefront of this transformation, so Retail Brew sat down with her to talk about what it’s like to witness (and spearhead) a company’s AI transition. This interview has been edited for clarity and length. Innovation seems to have really accelerated at David’s Bridal recently. What inspired this pivot toward technology investment? A bride is a super-influencer. A bride is influencing over 300 moments that lead up to that walk down the aisle in an 18-month period. So you think about that: They’re making 300 decisions, and there’s hundreds of transactions that happen in that decision. The wedding planning marketplace is a 100-plus-billion-dollar opportunity. We were only really tapping into the dress sale, and we actually have the opportunity to think about the bride in a much more holistic way and build out an ecosystem for her. So we built the first-ever AI that plans your whole wedding for you called [Pearl by David’s], and that was the beginning of it. Since then, we’ve been doing everything wrapped around the bride, from the moment she thinks about content—with our acquisition of Love Storie…