Bridal seamstress ruined wedding dress

SUESMITH_2

i had the same problem with my dress and the bridesmaids in 1988 - my dress came from a shop 70 miles away, we all went for final fittings - they wanted a bit of alteration which they assured me they would do and i didnt need to try on again, oh went and picked them up a week before the wedding and i hung mine up and thought thats that - luckily my sil got her daughters to try on their dresses and she rang me in tears cos they didnt fit, i then had to struggle into my 80s meringue all by myself to check and of course it wasnt right.

oh had another day off work to take them all back and took my mum and my bil along for support and had a face off in the shop about it, the girl who had designed and made them all was mortified, and after the owner had flounced off she told my mum that the owner had insisted on finishing them even though she couldn't sew as "it doesnt matter, they live too far away to come back and complain and they've paid"

she then redid all the alterations properly

we got money back and expenses too - oh, bil and my darling mum were a formidable team

Lifeisbutadream

I had a similar problem when my daughter was a bridesmaid for my brother. I ordered the dress and was told that it would have to be odered in an age 11-12 (she was 7 at the time) because of her height (average, not particularly tall) and then would be altered to fit - I was very dubious, but went ahead -

It arrived and was altered with just a week to spare - it looked horrendous!!! I could have altered it better myself with my eyes shut!

I took it to a seemstress friend who told me that the dress was the wrong size for my daughter and would never fit her, so I went back to the shop and asked for a refund - they said no, so I basically stood i the shop with the crap dress showing customers what they could expect from the shop. They refunded my £120 after about 2 hours.

I then had to run around York trying to find DD another dress in time! I did get her a lovely one in teh end, but it was very stressful I cant imagine how someone must feel if they were the bride.

talulahbeige_2

isplumm wrote: »

Hi,

I think you are being a bit harsh on the OP here ..... they only posted at 10PM last night .... your post is only 14 hours later during the day ... give them a chance!

Mark

Did I not say i was giving them the benefit of the doubt?
Personally if i was that upset and worried I wouldnt have posted and run, I would have been around to see the responses!

Twopints

Ivory_Tinkler wrote: »

Clearly you have taken remarks as being rude just because people said things what you didn't want to hear :rolleyes: For instance the suggestion I made about the lipstick IS a possibility - it is so easy to get makeup on clothes even when the greatest care is taken.

Glad to hear you got it sorted out though.

No, I suspect it was because people made dumb comments like "we're not getting the whole story".

zara*elise

The same happened to me. I used a seamstress who had the dress for three months before she decided to start work. A week before the wedding she'd still not started it, nor the bridesmaid dresses and when she did attempt it it looked awful. Honestly, she had done gorgeous dresses before but she really mucked up on this one.

She was really upset and worried about her reputation (I threatened court action and a story in the press etc etc) so she refunded me all the monry I'd paid, and I spend the day before my wedding travelling to London to get a new dress and get it altered to fit on the same day.

I really hope she gets it sorted. I think the best course of action is to contact CAB and trading standards, threaten the shop with court action and a story in a local paper or glossy mag and that should hopefully do it!

xx

the_seamstress

I have been a dressmaker for 40years with bags of experience. I know that young ladies can change their size from month to month even doing upper arm exercises so they look good on the day with their shoulders showing, this can make them wider. I recently experienced a bride who asked me to alter her wedding dress and 3 bridesmaids dresses. I delivered the dress's back to the shop 3 weeks before the wedding, expecting that they would try them on before accepting and paying for them.Even though the bride was informed she failed to pick the dress's up until the Saturday afternoon 30mins before closing and the day before her wedding. Imagine my shock when 2 days after the wedding she informs the shop whom I do the alterations for, that one of the dress's was too small, and she had to walk down the aisle with the side hanging out.she says her bridesmaids lived too ar away to come for fittings, and that they should have been perfect, I do not know if its the bridesmaid who has got bigger or if I've made a mistake. she's now trying to claim all her money back for all of the alterations (there was nothing wrong with the other dress's )and compensation for the photography package to photo her before the wedding, in total she wants nearly £ 800 for a £45 alteration, which she failed to check, which if she had, would have given me time to alter it.She has also bounced the cheque and threatened court action if I don't agree to her demands. Can anyone help? I have spoken to T.S and they say that its her fault and she should have given me reasonable time to fix them, she says that T.S told her that she has a strong case.

neilmcl

Why not start a separarte thread rather than resurrecting one over a year old.

shellsuit

neilmcl wrote: »

Why not start a separarte thread rather than resurrecting one over a year old.

They are new, so maybe they didn't know how to and just googled something and happened to come across this thread.

I despair of this place sometimes! :cool:









theseamstress, surely it was upto the bride to have the dresses tried on, in good time before her wedding, so that if the dresses weren't right, there would have been enough time to sort them out!

I'd say it was her fault, that is just stupid picking them up the day before, when they had been sitting there for 3 weeks.

I can't offer any advice, but good luck with it all.

geordieracer

Its a well known fact that fat women will try and get into a dress that is 3 sizes too small.

neilmcl

shellsuit wrote: »

They are new, so maybe they didn't know how to and just googled something and happened to come across this thread.

I despair of this place sometimes! :cool:

I wasn't having a go, just passing on some advice as the OP would likely get a better response to their own thread.