I'm quite cross as I feel I've been 'tricked' a little bit by the dress shop, but I don't know if it was intentional or not. Basically the history is this:
I'd chosen my dress online from Honeypie Boutique, and the dress plus ribbon sash plus relevant petticoats came to a total of £250 tops. Our budget, which we set early on, was based around this fact. Myself and my sister (MoH) then went to a wedding fayre to look for other things, and a prom dress caught my eye - it was GORGEOUS. The dress shop owner was there and asked me if I'd sorted my dress blah blah blah - the gorgeous prom dress was £450 and could be made in any colour. I arranged to visit the shop 2 days later.
At the shop, I pointed out that I had already set my budget at £250, but could scrape together (literally!) an extra £200 so could, at absolute maximum, afford the prom dress - but that it MUST come with all petticoats etc, no extras. I tried it on, and the bridal version (designer makes both) and loved the bodice. The skirt was too long, but I knew this as I wanted something to finish just on my knee (the dress was ballerina length). The Dress Shop Lady said she felt if the skirt was shortened (which was 7 layers of tulle!) it wouldn't have enough weight to hold it down so would look a bit 'tutu-ish'. I agreed, and DSL showed me another dress by the same designer with a full circle satin skirt (I wanted full circle as going fifties theme).
We then sat down and 'designed' a dress, as follows:
- Bodice from the dress I tried on (in ivory), but I wanted a laced up / corseted back instead of zip.
- Satin circle skirt (ivory), with a couple of layers of net attached to make it more full, but NOT 7 layers!!
- Seperate red petticoat - I wanted it seperate as I hope to use the dress again, and didn't want to be tied to always having a red contrasting colour.
- The petticoat would sit 2"-3" lower than the dress skirt - I stated that I wanted a 27" petticoat. DSL measured this on me while I was wearing the dress and hitched it up to that height - I stated that was 'perfect'.
- The original prom dress had a number of contrasting coloured fabric flowers across the body and down the skirt - again, we ordered these 'freelance' (meaning not stitched onto the dress) in red, so I could remove them if I was wearing the dress with a different accent colour.
I then went home, with DSL planning on calling the designer to find out if they could do the above, and what price. She called me 2 days later to say they could do it all, still for £450. She did say that their in-house seamstress might have to do the lace-up bodice, but I commented at that point that I definitely couldn't go over £450 and she said, 'that's fine, don't worry, it'll all be perfect!'I had to pay 50% at that point, which was expected.
Fast forward 5 months (a fristration in itself as I was told 12 weeks, 16 absolute maximum) and I go to see dress. It's currently got a zipped bodice, the petticoat is lovely but WAY too long (ankle length!), the dress has no built in petticoats at all and is also ankle length. The DSL wasn't there, her business partner / main manager was there and so was the seamstress, and they said the seamstress would do all alterations. I was then told I had to pay the balance there and then, which I wasn't told when I booked the appointments, but fortunately was able to. The manager tried to get me to pay more than the expected £225 (she didn't say how much, she just said 'Oh, there's lots of extras because the designers changes a lot for you') which I refused to pay, so I just paid the £225 balance.
I'm really worried that the seamstress is going to charge me a lot to shorten both dress and petticoat, even though I asked for it to be made in the shorter length (and as the whole dress was made bespoke, that should have been easy!). I'm quite cross that the skirt itself doesn't have any petticoats, because I HAVE to wear it with the red petti or it is totally flat. I'm worried I'll be charged a fortune to have the back made into a laced back, but that was my primary requirement of my wedding dress so I don't want to go without!
My first official fitting with the seamstress is mid-May, 9 weeks before the wedding. I'm really worried - part of me wants to demand my money back and order a honeypie dress (can I? The dress is not what I asked for - how do I prove this?) - but if I go down that road it needs to be ASAP as honeypie need 10-12 weeks plus postage time AND I'd want to allow fitting time (although do know a good local seamstress) and the wedding is 15 weeks away.
Cookies if you got to the end of that lot!!
