Morgan Renae Bridal Boutique & Beauty a family business in Hamilton

For the newly engaged, or those just days away from their weddings, Morgan Renae Bridal Boutique & Beauty on Main Street in Hamilton is a new place to shop. Brides can go there for their hair and makeup.

“You can come in and have fun,” said Morgan Davis, whose middle name, Renae, provided the shop’s name. “You’re newly engaged, you have your whole family that wants to go shopping with you. Because once you’re engaged, you want to go to stores, you don’t really want to order online. That kind of takes the fun out of it.”

Davis and her husband, Rick Miller, own the store at 211 Main St. He built out the interior, did the floors and also works the store for her on Tuesdays through Saturdays for her when she has weddings or other store responsibilities outside the shop.

“It’s a family business,” Davis said with a laugh. “He knows everything about the wedding planning, the makeup we do, the hairstyles, and all that stuff.”

The store’s sign has a saying: We sell everything but the dress.

“When you look at bridal boutiques, literally anywhere, it’s mostly just bridal gowns, bridal dresses, veils and all of that,” Davis said. “We don’t sell any of that. We literally sell everything else but that.”

Credit: Nick Graham

Credit: Nick Graham

The store sells things many older couples didn’t think to buy back in the day: Not only gifts for the groomsmen and bridal gifts for the bridesmaids; but ‘proposal boxes’ that are used to ask people if they will be in their wedding; personalized robes; resort-ware for honeymoons; even comfy sleep shirts or slippers for flower girls so they feel included in a wedding.

There’s no other local store like this, Davis said, “Not in Dayton, Oxford, really anywhere that you can go and grab just your essentials that you need for last-minute bridal-party gifts, bridal shower or grooms’ parties, all of that.”

ExploreNew bakery and cake-decorating shop opens in former Hamilton coffee shop

The store also does on- and off-site hair and makeup, with a team of 13 women who travel “everywhere, and we do a little over 100 weddings a year,” Davis said. They have gone as far as Louisville and Lexington, and specialize in airbrush makeup, a lightweight, silicone-based foundation that’s sweat-proof, waterproof and smudgeproof, “so it’ll last you all night long.”

Davis, a 2011 Fairfield High School graduate, has done wedding hair and makeup 5½ years. She and Miller recently moved from West Chester to Hamilton’s Highland Park neighborhood.

“We had a very, very soft opening because I had a new baby, so we were very slow in opening,” Davis said. She is mother to three daughters, Brooklynn, Autumn and Oaklee, who is 3 months old.

The shop goes all-in for couples who want to have “All-Hamilton Weddings,” with materials about local venues, cakes and supplies. It’s open Tuesdays through Thursdays noon to 5 p.m.; Fridays 1-7 p.m. and Saturdays 11 a.m. to 7 p.m.