So I picked out a bridesmaid dress with my bridesmaids who fell in love with it. Unfortunately there were a lot of issues and stress that ended up coming along with this dress.
So this was the dress we purchased in the designer's photo.
Designer Photo of Dress
The dress they had in the store to try on was all black.
Dress We Tried On In Store
The only thing about the red we didn't like was the necklace had bright red thread throughout it and I thought that looked a bit gaudy. So I asked to have it custom made as the red dress, but with the black necklace. We tried to put the exact fabric over the black dress to envision it.
Red Dress with Black Necklace
The shop is a mom and pop shop and run by the owner and her husband. She does all the ordering and also alterations. I told her, I want this dress just like the red dress except with a black necklace. As you can see the dress has an illusion neckline and I asked her, if that was red or nude. She said, oh that's red, but it's very fine in color, like with the black dress mesh. You can't even tell it's on the dress. So I said, alright I want the dress to be exactly like the red one shown in the picture except with a black necklace.
All of my girls ordered this dress in early February and she promised it would be in by may. Then come June, I called her and she said due to shipping issues with China it would be in by the end of June at the latest. In July, I called the store again and got her husband. He told me that the dresses were never supposed to arrive before the END of July. When I tried to say I was originally told May, he told me I was mistaken. So the dresses ended up coming in around July 20th. When I saw the dress, I was startled because the mesh looked NOTHING like the designer's photo of the dress. It looked garish red. When I brought this up to the owner, she told me, it disappears into the skin and you won't even see it! I picked up my SIL's dress bc she's out of town, took it home, and ended up trying it on just to see what it looked like. This was the result.
What Actually Arrived
I was horrified. This dress was $215 and looked like an awful Chinese knockoff! It was almost Fushia! The actual dress I loved, but the mesh itself looked beyond terrible and was totally distracting and ugly. I called the shop the next morning and asked if there was any way they could fix it by swapping out the mesh with a nude color and they said they would have to order fabric from China and maybe not even then.
So I called around and found a seamstress who could do it in the timeframe for the wedding, but she said it would be $600 ($100 for each dress). I knew I couldn't ask my bridesmaids for this and didn't have the budget for it myself but they looked so bad I made an appointment. I went to the store to get the rest of the girls' dresses and was told by the owner that she had already ordered the mesh and was going to fix them. I was frustrated and said, you literally said you couldn't do that so I called someone else. She says it was just a miscommunication. I finally said, I don't understand how this looks so different from designer's photo on the website. She let me know that she'd never seen that picture and didn't know what it looked like. I showed her again and she said, well that dress had nude mesh. You specifically said you wanted it custom built with red. I said, no I wanted it to look like the picture (which you told me was red). Did you specifically alter the dress? She was like of course! I told the manufacturer to replace the original mesh with a bright red to match the dress.
I told her I definitely never said that and finally she said, well maybe she had been confused and ordered the wrong thing. She offered to fix all of the dresses for free, but I was reluctant after all of the things that had gone wrong and when I told her so, she was very offended, went into the back of her shop where a lady was paying for a ring bearer outfit and asked her to "vouch for her abilities as a seamstress" and let the lady know I didn't think I could trust the owner. I had the stranger tell me how wonderful she was. In the end, I realized I just couldn't afford the alterations on my own. So I agreed to let her do them. She ended up getting them to the girls one week before my wedding which was stressful. The end result was gorgeous and exactly what I had envisioned.
It Finally Came Out Right
She did do the change for free and admitted to her mistake, but I'm not sure how to review her work. I want to be honest, but also fair and I don't know if I should just not review her at all? It was an exhausting and stressful process.
