Dressing the Party: Round 2

Dressing the Party: Round 2

June 7th, 2011 @ 11:43 am by Ms. Ferris Wheel
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A few weeks after Round 1, I went to a fancy bridal salon hoping to see some of the Alfred Angelo and Alfred Sung dresses I’d been looking at online. As soon as we got there, I felt uncomfortable and out of place but I just chalked it up to lack of familiarity with this kind of store. Oh, if only I’d been aware of the 2.5 star rating on Yelp perhaps I would’ve moderated my expectations a bit.

logo via Yelp

You remember me talking about how principled I am when it comes to dress shopping, yeah? Well let’s just say that a huge store with only twelve “plus-size” (meaning larger than 14) bridesmaid dress options and a consultant who refused to acknowledge the store’s limited plus-size inventory (until I brought it up), was honestly just never going to work for me. Thus I learned that one needs to call and ask about these things before you just show up for an appointment.

image via cbcastro’s Flickr page

I’m not proud of it, but I’ll admit that I was feeling pretty ’over it’ from very early on. My Party Person shopping pal was wonderfully cheerful and optimistic to counteract my Eeyore-esque attitude, though. You’ll notice that there aren’t dress pictures to accompany this post, and that’s because there really wasn’t much worth remembering. We tried on all of four dresses, I think. The consultant kept telling us that if we picked a dress online she would happily order it for us so we could buy it from that store, but for me the point of going to a store is so that you can try things on before you buy them. Usually I’m all about shopping online, but my indecision over dress styles means I have this crazy need to actually see everything in person. And in any event, if I were going to order them sight unseen, there’s a more-than-decent chance that I’d stand on principle and order them from a store that carried a wider selection of plus-size samples.

image by HerbFellow via deviantART

This negative bridal salon experience seriously made me want to crawl into a little bride cave and just disappear for a while, and it certainly did nothing to increase my excitement about wedding gown shopping. But Party Person N encouraged me to get back on the horse, and she was right. That same night I serendipitously happened to find out that Alfred Angelo apparently had these “signature stores” where they carried all their styles in the full range of sizes. And luckily for me, there was a signature store relatively close by. Since I knew they offered a gray color called charcoal, I was feeling kinda hopeful that one trip to this signature store would result in me finally making a decision about these dresses. So… I got back on the horse.

If you were ever surprised (and not in a good way) by something that happened at a bridal salon, were you able to get over it or did you choose to move on to a different store?

Tags: bridesmaid-dress, san-francisco |

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9 Responses to “Dressing the Party: Round 2”

Member

blu77 (message) 1,044 posts, Bumble bee

I don’t blame you for feeling a little Eeyore, that’s a really crappy experience!!! I’m glad you have the Alfred Angelo signature store in your area!! And I know people don’t love David’s Bridal, but the fact that they stock so many sizes was so important to me. I *needed* to try on dresses, not hold them up to me and imagine.

6/7/11 @ 12:05 pm (reply)

Member

lindzann1 (message) 50 posts, Worker bee

I leave and breathe yelp!! Love reading and writing those reviews I also had a nasty experience at a “fancy” bridal salon. I was looking for my gown and when I told the salesperson my price range, I could literally see her eyes glaze over. Upon commenting to my mom about a lovely dress on a mannequin, the salesperson quickly snapped “Oh, that is WAY out of your price range. In fact, ALL of the mannequin dresses are.” Umm…yeah. Needless to say, that shop got a whopping 1-star review from me on yelp

6/7/11 @ 12:08 pm (reply)

Bee

Miss Magic (message) 628 posts, Busy bee

My salon was nice to me, but insulted my shopping buddy / BM when she mentioned her dress was from David’s Bridal. This is while I was signing on the line, so I couldn’t so much about it, but it left me with a snotty impression of that store….

6/7/11 @ 12:28 pm (reply)

Guest

Lone Star

Boy, I did. I went to a fancy salon here in Dallas, one of THE salons here. I was excited about it. I am a size 6 (street), size 8 in wedding gowns. But I still didn’t want a strapless dress– I just never felt like it looked good on me since I have broad shoulders (can’t fight genetics!). Also, I hate wedding dresses that show cleavage. Not going to do that in a church in front of my grandparents! So I went to this store, and asked nicely for any non-strapless dresses. They showed me TWO. That’s it. And quite with the snobby attitude. I tried one on, and the lady kept telling me how conservative I was and “Dallas brides are SO conservative” like it’s a bad thing. And then she kept pushing me to try on strapless dresses and have them altered. Lady, if I knew how to design a dress, I would!

So, I went back to David’s bridal and found “THE” dress. It’s a shame this salon (and the one we visited after, which also had very few non-strapless) was so one-track-minded when it came to wedding dresses.

6/7/11 @ 12:31 pm (reply)

Bee

Mrs. Elephant (message) 6,182 posts, Bee Keeper

I had many bridal salon shopping stories, but the one that kinda urked me was the store that wouldn’t tell you the dress numbers. When I found the dress at several other stores for cheaper, I still gave store #1 the option to match them but they said nope.

6/7/11 @ 12:52 pm (reply)

Member

deliciousgroove (message) 206 posts, Helper bee

I went to david’s bridal to just look at dresses to get an idea of what the styles look like in an “average” size. I wear a size 8 in street sizes which is a 12 in bridal. So any-who..I showed up without an appointment on a weekday. The sales girl at Davids was great. I told her I was just starting my dress search and had ZERO idea of what I wanted. She suggested a few dresses that would compliment my figure and took me to the dressing room. I had no friends or family with me and no intention of buying. The sales girl pulled the first dress… I tried it on and I knew it was “THE DRESS”… I tried on one more dress just to compare, but went back to the first dress…. Best part was… it was $900 on sale for $399… it sucked that my family wasnt with me, but I wasnt letting this dress go. I bought the dress an returned a month later with family for the fitting…. I cant wait to wear my dress…. it is simply perfect.

6/7/11 @ 2:22 pm (reply)

Guest

Somebirds

I too ran into several experiences like this. My despite the fact that I had half of my bridal party with me on a shopping trip, my mother was the only one who could try on 95% of the dresses because the rest of us were a size 16+.

I wish I had known about the signature stores! That would have been so helpful!

6/7/11 @ 7:55 pm (reply)

Bee

Miss Snow Cone (message) 1,026 posts, Bumble bee

so far, so good, but I’ve heard so many stories of cruddy customer service once you’ve signed on the dotted line. it’s so unfair, but these salons pretty much know you’re never coming back, so they can do as they please and (largely) get away with it!

6/7/11 @ 9:40 pm (reply)

Guest

Emma

Oh man. I went to four shops on my first trip, with my fiance.

The first one (Berketex - they are evil, yo) wouldn’t let the Mr come in with me because it was girls only. We left, immediately. Not interested, sorry.

The second and third were incredibly expensive and snobby and barely even spoke to us. Yes, I look like a student, but that doesn’t mean you can be rude to me.

The fourth was lovely. The girl in there let me run around like an excited child and try on a whole bunch of dresses, and we eventually bought one from that place.

6/9/11 @ 7:11 pm (reply)