David’s Bridal, the company best known for racks of white gowns and fitting-room tears, plans to take its artificial intelligence platform public. According to CNBC, the retailer intends to spin off Pearl into a publicly traded company by 2027.
What Pearl actually is
Pearl is the name David’s Bridal gives to its AI-driven wedding planning ecosystem. The company has organized it around two main products, one for each side of the wedding economy.
The first is Pearl Planner, built for couples. It handles budgeting, vendor matching and task management, and it tracks more than 300 separate wedding planning tasks.
The second is Pearl Connect, aimed at wedding vendors such as photographers, florists and venues. It launched on September 16, 2026, as a dual-sided platform that links vendors with couples, and its tiered pricing begins at $49 per month.
The pitch rests on data. David’s Bridal says Pearl draws on 75 years of proprietary wedding information collected over the company’s long history in bridal retail.
The early numbers
Pearl Planner entered public beta in 2025. Within nine months, it had attracted more than 110,000 users.
The company reached that figure without spending on paid marketing. Users spend an average of six minutes per session on the planner.
From bankruptcy to algorithm
David’s Bridal emerged from Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2023 and was acquired by CION Investment Corp. for $20 million.
Under CEO Kelly Cook and President and Chief Business Officer Elina Vilk, the company has pursued what it calls its “Aisle to Algorithm” strategy. The goal is to shift David’s Bridal from an inventory-heavy retailer into a technology-first wedding platform that blends retail with an AI-powered marketplace.
What this means
The key things to watch over the next year are Pearl’s user growth beyond its beta numbers, early traction for Pearl Connect among vendors, and any concrete details on how and where the spinoff would be structured.
Disclosure: This article was edited by Diego Almada Lopez. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.