A 76-year-old bridal chain, twice through bankruptcy, now bets big on algorithms. David’s Bridal’s leaders see brides not just buying dresses, but steering a $100 billion wedding machine. Elina Vilk, chief business officer, pulls no punches. CEOs fixated on AI’s quick payback? They’re missing the point. Vilk joined in 2024 from tech stints at PayPal, Hootsuite, and Meta . She wasn’t the obvious pick for a dress seller. Yet under CEO Kelly Cook, the company launched ‘Aisle to Algorithm’ in 2025. This shift builds an asset-light model: Pearl, an AI wedding planner; a retail media network; expansions into menswear, swimwear, accessories. They snapped up Love Stories TV for content. Integrations with OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Microsoft’s Copilot bring agentic AI to shopping searches. The bride drives it all. ‘A bride is a super-influencer,’ Vilk says. ‘A bride is influencing over 300 moments that lead up to that walk down the aisle in an 18-month period.…