Missouri Bridal Shop Of Doom Might Actually Hate Brides, Bridesmaids
A funny story from KSDK in St. Louis looks at the bridal store "I Do I Do"—now under new management—and some of the more colorful complaints received by the Better Business Bureau over the past few years. (The store has an F rating with the BBB.) It's quite likely, based on these complaints, that "I Do I Do" was employing a chimpanzee to make alterations.
Here's what one woman said happened to her and another bridesmaid:
When the work finally was done, just days before the wedding, she said she noticed multiple problems. Stitches were coming out or "popping open," the hem was coming undone and the dark brown dress was sewn with light brown thread, she said. She said the dress of another bridesmaid was so poorly altered that she could not even get her arms in the arm holes. The woman said the wedding was rescued only by the last-minute heroics of the mother of one of the bridesmaids who was a seamstress.
Another woman said she ended up paying double the price of the dress:
She said at the time of her original order, she had tried on a size 10 dress which was too large. But when the dress arrived, it was a size 18 and alterations from I Do I Do made the $170 dress not wearable. She said she had to pay $160 for emergency alterations.
Another bridesmaid ended up with a very modern, deconstructed look (we don't know what "deconstructed" actually means, but they used it a lot on Project Runway so we know it's fashion-related):
But when she tried on her dress after the shop had completed alterations, she discovered several problems. The neckline, which was supposed to be horizontal instead was at a "20 or 30-degree angle." She said four inches of the inside lining of the dress were hanging below the bottom of the dress. She said the hem looked like it had been cut by "a 2-year-old" with scissors. The woman said an outside seamstress "had to rip out every seam and remake it."
And here's what the store's owner had to say about the charges against her store: "Some people, you just can't make happy."
"Chesterfield bridal shop causes wedding chaos" [KSDK.com] (Thanks to Pete!)
(Photo: rocksee)
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Comments:
@Esquire99: Part of it too is that in today's society, people are simply unfamiliar with the role of a seamstress or tailor. Very few people buy everyday clothes that require the services of either. Thus, not fully understanding how important a good alterer is for the quality of the finished product, they simply pick one out of the phone book, or perhaps the closest to the home.
@Esquire99: The price of the dress and the fact that it might be a really nice-looking shop (it's located in Chesterfield, which is a pretty nice area of St. Louis County) plus the fact that they are selling the idea of a "dream dress" or a "dream wedding" might be what keeps them in business.
Reliable word-of-mouth recommendations are the way to go with bridal places. If they can't sew really well and be able to handle fittings and alterations within a deadline then there's going to be trouble.
I want to know why soooo many of these bridal stores go out of business taking customers' deposits with them? At least once a year around here, and almost everywhere else I've been, there have been stories about this.
Do these stories stand out more than others, or is bridal shop just a euphemism for here today, gone tomorrow?
@Vanilla5: But then so many other places are. I always thought it was a much better idea to shop around and not rush a weeding chances are you will only have one that is absolutely huge and that it should be perfect. So perfect most don't even shop around
Gah. I had to deal with an inept seamstress for my own wedding dress. I decided to just use to bridal store's seamstresses but I DID say, "I want the most experienced seamstress."
During my last fitting, the seamstress actually said to me, "So, I was looking on the internet on how to do bustles..." and I knew I was in trouble. (Bustles are when you hook the train up to your butt so that you're not dragging it around, and is used mostly for the reception or when you don't want to be dragging that damn train around). The stupid thing kept falling out all reception long, and I eventually had to get multiple safety pins to get it to stay up.
Get someone with references. That's all I'm sayin'.
Most dress shops are opened by women who think it will be fun to work with young ladies and pretty dresses. They have no clue about the work involved, especially since not every bride turns out to be a sweet-tempered 20-something with a perfect figure and a gaggle of easy-going girlfriends. The best measure of a good shop is that they carry a wide variety of sizes and that they are enthused about helping you. They should be up-front about alteration costs, and provide written estimates (you'd be surprised how many don't).
Wedding dress stores live on the thin edge of financial disaster, constantly. For one thing, they are forced by the manufacturers to purchase their spring lines during the Xmas season when business is dead. I worked in a wedding boutique for years and I actually saw Novembers and Decembers slip by without one sale occuring. Things turn around dramatically in January, but overhead still has to be paid in those slow months. A good (and wise) dress store will use your deposit to buy your dress, but one that is starting to go, financially, may use it to buy a someone else's dress that was ordered last week. The shop may pull out of its decline, but often, it just ends up spiraling out of control, until the shop has no choice but close and declare bankruptcy.
Always get a written estimate on alterations, and just because you bought the dress at shop A doesn't mean you can't get shop B to do the alterations, although they will charge a bit more for dresses purchased elsewhere. Always get the opinions of real customers about their experiences -- and ask at the local dry cleaners, they know the good shops. And always Always ALWAYS pay with a credit card. When a wedding dress store closes, it's almost always suddenly, leaving brides stranded with neither dress nor deposit. At least your CC will likely get your deposit back.
I wonder if a bridal store can get away with bad service longer than other types of stores since they rely less on repeat business. After all, any given customer is unlikely to be getting married again very soon.
@DovS: Unlikely. Most brides "of prime marrying age**" (mid 20's to early 30's) have many firends who are also, or will soon be getting married, so the experiences of the bride will spread to all of her friends, and all of her friends friends. They may be able to survive a while, but eventually word of bad service will get around.
** by this comment I am not suggesting that women outside of this age range can not or will not get married, I just wanted to remove a multi sentence description to indicate the ages when the majority of women get married. Face it, when you are in your mid to late 20's you are invited to a wedding every other weekend in the summer, as you get older it drops off until your 40's-50's when your children and their friends are getting married.
@Fujikopez: Really, it's not that hard. It's amazing how people don't get it. Buttons, people, buttons!
@zacox: Yeah, this is a problem around here too, probably even worse with the economy. I know at least one shop that closed last year. People are probably just going with off the shelf dresses more these days because sometimes the bride nor the bridesmaids can afford to buy dresses that cost hundreds of dollars that will only be worn once.
@Esquire99: The problem with bridal stories is precisely that they do not care about repeat business... they'll tell you anything you want to hear while trying to sell you a dress and assure you it can be altered, but by the time you realize what a bad job they've done, what can you do? Say you'll never shop there again? That was already a given. Bridal shops do not allow returns under any circumstances. Granted, we do have the internet now, but not everyone realizes they can check these things out online.
@Outrun1986: The bridal shops that existed when I was a teenager are still around. The ones that popped up around 2001 when the big wedding became a craze are all drying up and closing. What is probably going on is the fly by night operations are running out of customers. Just like all of the construction companies that popped up during the housing boom are gone.
@Fujikopez: Good luck with that. Finding someone with experience willing to do alterations in a bridal shop for $6-8 an hour is not quite as easy as you think. Sewing and alterations people are considered below the janitor in pay and respect yet they make or break a business.
@Esquire99: You can get a wedding dress at David's Bridal for that cheap if you go at the right time. And they at least hire humans (stupid or not) to do their alterations lol.
@italianscallion33: They stay in business because the laws and regulations are so lax it takes a lot of effort to actually shut them down.
@Esquire99: They stay in business because people are obviously too busy to be inconvenienced by the tiny amount of time it takes to look up a business at the BBB's website. You'd think someone who was planning one of the most important days of her life would put in a LITTLE effort to find a decent bridal shop. While what this shop did is inexcusable, how about we chastise the OP a LITTLE, too, for going with a place that has an F grade from the BBB.
@italianscallion33: Agreed. This isn't our first stroll down the aisle, so both Groomzilla and I are keeping things on the cheap and casual side of the aisle. I hear stories like this and shudder. I'll likely just find something nice at one of our local department stores or David's and call it good.
As I'm currently dating a professional seamstress, I thought I'd weigh in. She receives a LOT of last minute and emergency repair work from panicked brides who were screwed over by a chain store (read: David's Bridal) $8 / hour so-called "seamstress".
Look online for dedicated seamstress / tailor shops in your area (or ask the local dry cleaners like a previous poster mentioned), by dedicated I mean that's all they do. Get your measurements done there, order the dress online (easy when done far enough in advance) to save money and use that money to work with the professional seamstress / tailor.
IMHO that is the best way to do it. Working with a dedicated professional is very rewarding and you'll come out looking great.
@italianscallion33: My wife got her dress at David's Bridal for $225. Why so cheap? Simply because it was last year's fashion and marked down for $1200 to $225. She told me how pissed off the saleswoman was after showing her all these $1000 dresses that her final choice was a cheap one from last year.
Oh well it saved us the cost and was so beautiful that I thought she paid over $1000 for it.
One way to find a good seamstress is to ask at your local sewing machine shop. (Not a craft store like JoAnn's, an actual machine shop. They sometimes rent space inside craft stores though.)
When I got married a few years ago, I avoided the bridal shops like the plague. Instead, I went to a boutique that sold dresses and separates made by local and Latin designers and ended up getting a beautiful dress that no one else had that fit perfectly off the rack and cost less than $200.
In terms of tailors, the best I've found are the ones who work for Nordstrom. You can bring in other pieces that need work, not just clothes you buy at the store. They've managed to nip in the waists of my jeans better than anyone else I've tried, and they aren't pushy about doing things the way they want them done like some of the specialty tailoring shops I've tried.
@TWSS: That's what I decided to do, should I ever get married. I don't want a designer frou-frou cupcake wedding dress; I should be able to find something suitable in other types of stores. I can sew on beads and sparkles myself if I want to, and I'm sure I can find accessories without too much trouble.
That's assuming I ever get married, which at this juncture looks unlikely. :P
Reminds me of buying cosplay off eBay!
Another argument for using a wedding planner. The planner has vendors of all kinds, not just seamstresses, that he/she works with all the time. Not only are they trusted by the planner, but the vendors care about the service because the planner is the repeat customer.
I went with my planner's recommendations on all but two vendors (because I had connections with them) and I couldn't have been happier.
I'm surprised these kinds of places are able to stay in business these days. I know they don't rely on repeat business and in the days before the internet they could screw people over with little chance of word getting really spread around. However, given the proliferation of review sites (Yelp, BBB online, etc.) it amazes me that people still do business with shops that so blatantly don't care. Then again, if they are selling wedding dresses for under $200, they might simply have a captive market that can't really go elsewhere.