When I was 22 my mom told my best friend and I to go to her friend’s bridal shop. We are casually dressed. She wouldn’t show us any. Later she asked my mom when we were coming in. My mom told her what happened. The owner asked who waited on us and it was her. We bought at a place that treated us great. My husband had a master’s degree in math. But he loved working as a tool and dye maker. We meet at a car dealership right after work. He has jeans and a flannel shirt on. He also has a clipboard with what we wanted and prices from consumer reports (no internet back then). He only answered my husband’s questions about exact prices for various options with generalities and wouldn’t give us exact prices. We walked out and bought elsewhere. It wasn’t even a expensive car being a ford escort.
Bridal shops are awful. When I bought my dress, I was with my very well-groomed mom, and the sales staff fawned over me. When I went to pick it up after alterations, I was with a friend and we were dressed down in old T-shirts and jeans (and I looked younger than mid-20s). The staff first ignored us completely and then treated us dismissively until they saw the paid-in-full receipt. It was so rude and gross that if the dress hadn't already been altered, I'd have asked for a full refund.
It's astounding how poorly vendors in the wedding industry behave. They get away with it only because people have been conditioned to tolerate excess expense and poor customer service.
One of my daughter's sisters was about to pay through the nose for alterations to a wedding gown she'd (very sensibly) bought second-hand. The dress was gorgeous: an asymmetrical cut with gathering on one side, sleeveless, with medieval-style lacing in the back. The alterations vendor, who either didn't want to do the work or who didn't have the skills, refused to do more than half of the work that the gown needed but wanted to charge her well over $300 to shorten some spaghetti straps, add a dancing loop for the train, tighten a few loose stitches, and raise the front of the hem into a high-low. What also needed to be done was for the sides of the dress to be taken in to fit the bride and to allow the back lacing to display properly in a "V" shape over the placket instead of being pulled snug. The bride also really wanted some contrasting lacing in her bridal colors, and a high-low cut with the front of the dress rising almost to the knee and tapering back into the train. Yes, it's a lot of work especially on an asymmetrical gown, but instead of breaking down what it would cost to do each individual feature, the vendor snowed the bride, telling her
that the sizing alteration didn't need to be done and that the back lacing was supposed to be pulled tight enough for the edges to touch, instead of being laced up over the placket. That was nonsense, of course. But most people don't buy wedding gowns more than once in their lives and have no experience ordering alterations or working with a tailor. Also, most people no longer know how to sew so they don't have any idea whether a specific piece of work will take a little bit of time, or a lot. This means it's impossible for them to tell whether the labor rates being charged are reasonable.
Now, my sewing skills are strong because I learned to do it when I was seven and have been doing it off and on all my life. At one point I did tailoring as a side gig. I own a serger. I've made a wedding gown from scratch and I know the basics of clothing design due to years of working on everything from gis to lingerie. I command, and textiles obey. They just can't help it: they fold and fasten in accordance with my will, and the movement of the needle is almost like an afterthought. So, I had the young woman rescue the dress. I did all the work-- what the bride ordered plus what the tailor told her she didn't need-- along with raising the hems on the bridesmaids' dresses and extending the seams on the thigh slits for a more conservative look-- in about fifteen hours of effort not including fittings. I did it for free because this was the family that had originally given me my Venomous Spaz Beast and I'd been looking for ways to pay them back for years. The VSB attended all the fittings, including the Say Yes To The Dress champagne toast I set up for the wedding party because the vendors couldn't be bothered.
My point with all of this is that the tailor had to know how lacing should look over a placket. He was savvy enough to talk her out of the parts of the work that required skill and effort. But he definitely didn't have to lie to the bride simply to avoid the portions of the work that required skill, while still charging her for the full effort. Folks like this get away with it simply because it's a wedding. I've seen the most idiotic excuses for workmanship-- crooked zippers, unhemmed skirts, and clothing held together with safety pins-- all on extremely expensive formal and wedding attire. And, for workmanship that wouldn't pass muster at even the flimsiest fast-fashion store, they charge a premium, and they get away with it because Wedding.
