Celestial Designs An awful place to alter your wedding dress Wasilla Alaska
If there is one single thing that I regret most about my entire wedding, it's having my alterations done by her. My dress was too long, and the bustle broke, on all points. Within 2 minutes of having it pinned up. I took one step and heard a tear. Took two more steps and heard a snap. I went in several times, and only 2 weeks before the wedding did she actually pin my dress to work on. The final fitting to make sure it fit was literally 24 hours before the wedding. She left very little time for alterations. Her shop is in some tiny little studio type room, with curtains being the only means of privacy dividing me from whoever was around. Her daughter came walking in while I was getting changed. That's my next complaint. She has two children who constantly were screaming at her for things every time I went in. To turn on the tv, food, whatever. The worst was in every time I had the dress on her 2 year old would come in and touch my phone, purse, and debit card sitting on the chair, and then, to my complete horror, started stomping around the hem of my dress in circles around me. She laughed it off. Her feet were dirty and she left stains on it, she had Dorito fingers or something and kept grabbing my dress. She's a bad business owner, but maybe even a worse mother for allowing that behavior in her workplace. For the outrageous amount I spent in her shop, surely she could afford a babysitter. That's another thing. I was quoted around $300 when I went in from the beginning. By the time she actually started the alterations it was 2 weeks before the wedding and way too late to find another seamstress, and I ended up paying nearly $600 for my alterations. She's incredibly unprofessional, scammed me when it came to prices, a horrible and sloppy business owner, and lacks any talent to work on wedding dresses. I couldn't dance with my dad or grandpa, or have my first dance even, because I was tripping over my dress. It was too long all around and after the bustle points snapped, I couldn't move. The modesty panel in the back of my corset kept falling down, and THREE times I had guests tell me they could see my underwear. It was humiliating and if I was a b**** I would have let it ruin my day. I am not a mean person, but this is beyond understandable. There's no excuse. The entire evening I was grabbing my dress from the bottom and holding it up to move. Most pictures of me are holding my dress up to my knees to walk around. I am just disgusted this woman is in business. Awful customer service. Way too expensive. Sloppy work. I'm disgusted.
1 Updates & Rebuttals
Celestial designs
Wasilla,Alaska,
More Details...
#2REBUTTAL Owner of company
Thu, August 28, 2014
It would have been nice if this customer would have contacted me first about issues she has with my business, instead she has forced me to diffuse every one of her claims in a public manner.
I will first address her claim to coming in several times and her gown only being done 24 hours before the wedding… She came in for the first time in April, the note on her estimate says “Gown is here, don’t do any alterations until consultation in June to note weight progress.” This customer had a habit of not showing up for scheduled fittings and not contacting me for days later. She did not decide until July 12th (wedding August 2nd) to remove the zipper and add a lace-up back with custom color lace-up, lace straps, and custom Swarovski beadwork to gown (which added $260 to the estimate). She was scheduled to come in to check the lace-up on July 18th, didn’t call and didn’t show up until July 24th 6 days later (wedding August 2nd). These circumstances are what pushed her pick-up closer to her wedding. The reason her gown was picked up the day before the wedding is because she had me steam it and keep it hanging for the wedding.
The curtains over the doorway to the fitting room…a common occurrence even in many retail stores.
Small studio…larger studio…more overhead…higher prices… can’t win on that one.
Bustle making a snap and tear sound when assembled, the only way for it to make an audible sound is for there to be pressure applied that opposes the action of hanging the bustle...aka someone pulling or standing on train. The modesty panel…if a lace-up back is laced up properly, there will be NO movement from the modesty panel. If a person looks closely at the pics she has posted to my facebook page, you can see that the person that laced her up went over more loops than they went behind. The proper way to tighten a lace-up is to go from behind each loop and pull firmly. This will give the gown the VERY tight corset feel/look they are after.
As far as pricing goes... a person can see that there was a lot of customization done to this gown, and these changes were added AFTER the original estimate, and yes, I do charge for items added after the original estimate.
For the personal attack on my motherhood, I will NEVER offer any apologies for being able to own a business and raise my children at the same time. I have a 2 and 8 year old that are able to come to work with me, and sometimes the 2-year old needs assistance. She is not a dirty child that runs around with doritos and tramples on the hems of brides. I have hundreds of happy customers that can attest to that fact.