I’m posting this because I don’t want other brides to go through the same experience. I bought two dresses for my wedding one from Kleinfelds and one from Carine’s bridal. I spent over $12,000 for the dress and accessories at Carine’s. Once... I wrote the check they no longer seemed to care about me as a customer. They scheduled my first dress fitting for a month before my wedding. I found this odd as Kleinfelds scheduled me three months out. I mentioned this to them, but they assured me they would do as many fittings as necessary to achieve the look I wanted.
Before I bought the dress, I asked the alterations department if they could build in a push-up bra so I would have lift in my dress and not need to wear a bra. For the $600.00 alterations charge, I thought this was a reasonable request and they said no problem. After the first fitting the dress still wasn’t tight and I felt as if the bodice was falling down. Their idea of building in a bra was to add a sew-in pad, like the kind you pull out of a VS bra and of course, they only had two sizes neither one of which worked for my dress.
My second fitting was scheduled the Friday before my wedding. I left my first fitting very concerned and emailed the owner a few days later asking to come in early because I was worried about how loose the dress fit. I was told, “all brides are concerned but they are professionals and are confident they can get the dress to fit correctly”. My concerns were brushed aside, again. At my second fitting the dress was loose, the bodice kept falling down and the padding made me look flat chested.
Ultimately, I ended up having to wear a push-up bra (which needed to continually be tucked in the entire night), and the dress did not fit correctly.
I would never have known the difference if not for my experience with another bridal shop, where I had five alterations and the dress fit like a glove.
I hope this post helps other brides from going through the same experience, please, please, please don’t waste your money and sanity, get the dress altered somewhere else.