Helen Miller Bridal Boutique

This review is a mixed bag. First, in the "pro" column: Helen Miller has many beautiful designs in her shop. Because she designs the dresses herself and has them made to order, she allows for customization with no extra charge depending on what you want to do. For instance, I asked for a slightly longer train and buttons all the way down the back of my dress. Helen made the experience of shopping for my dress very enjoyable. I love the dress I picked, and she kindly offered me a slight discount because it was just over the top of my budget. Her dresses are made of high-quality materials and her designs are unique and sophisticated. I also appreciated that she guaranteed the dress would be ready within a fairly narrow time window, as I live out of state and could only pick up the dress when I was in town visiting my parents. On the con side: my experience picking up the dress and getting alterations was less positive. As I said above, I had asked for a slightly longer train on my dress. Over email, Helen recommended adding no more than 10-15 inches to the train so that it would meet my length preference without becoming too heavy. When the dress arrived, I was shocked at how long it was, and expressed my surprise to Irina, Helen's colleague who was helping me that day. Irina said to me, "well you got what you asked for." I was taken aback by her comment and decided I would just have to convince myself to be happy with the train as it was, given that Irina did not seem open to my comments, and I had limited time while visiting my parents to get alterations done. I admit it did not occur to me to measure the train until later, after I had taken the dress home to my state. The train was 40 inches, which was much longer than the 20-25 Helen had recommended. I ended up paying an extra $200 to have another bridal seamstress shorten the train to what it originally should have been. I wrote to Helen to ask her to reimburse me for this cost, as we had an agreement in writing about what the train length should have been. She declined, citing her policy of not being responsible for changes to a dress once it leaves her store. She said she would have shortened the train for free when I picked it up if I had said something then. That may be true, but 1) I had no way of knowing that the alterations would have been free, because no one explained that to me, and 2) I had no reason to distrust that the dress was the length that I had requested, so I figured it was my mistake for ordering a too-long train and I would have to live with it. Overall, I'm disappointed that Helen doesn't stand behind the fidelity of her dresses to her customers' orders. I understand her policy of not paying for changes to dresses outside of the shop if a bride changing her mind or damages the dress - unscrupulous people exist and a dress shop should not be held liable for changes or damage that they did not cause. In my case, I was asking for compensation to return my dress to the state in which it should have originally arrived, and to which we agreed in writing. I wouldn't entirely dissuade a bride from purchasing a dress from Helen, but I would advise caution. Either take your dress elsewhere for alterations (I wasn't thrilled about the quality of my alterations either, but I'm leaving out those details as it's not the focus of this review), or measure and double-check everything when your dress arrives to make sure it lives up to what you ordered