Bustle Blues

I started writing this post, but it turned into a long rambling complaining about my experience with the David's Bridal alterations department.  I'm trying to keep it short and sweet (or not so sweet), so I'll get to the point:

- Alterations manager (AM) had my dress to do a hem and bustle for over a month, then tried to push back my appointment twice because it was not ready.

- AM left me a message to call her back the next day at 12:00 noon.  I was in the area and decided to stop in the store -- she was not even working that day.

- When AM was showing me how to bustle the dress, it took her over half an hour and multiple tries to figure out how to do it.

- The bustle was not done as we had discussed and left a lot of the dress dragging on the floor.  It did not look like a small train...it looked like pieces were falling out.

- When I asked her to make it shorter so it was not dragging on the ground, she made the back of the dress so high you could see my heels, but left the sides and the front long and sweeping the ground.

-When I asked her to make it so that it was even all around, she was unable to do it claiming that the style of my dress was too difficult.

- After over an hour, we finally got it to a point where it looked decent.  She told me to come back in two days to pick it up.  As I was getting undressed, she came to me with another bill!  I had to pay for more points that needed to be added to fix what she did wrong in the first place!

- Two days later, I came to pick up the dress and she was not even working that day.  Her assistant tried to show me how to bustle the dress but could not figure it out.  I stood there holding the back of my dress up for half an hour while the alterations lady, my maid of honor, and the sales girl all sat on the floor behind me trying to figure out this puzzle.  Apparently no one in the store had ever dealt with an under-bustle before.


- My maid of honor (who has never seen a bustle in her life) finally figured it out and did some workarounds to make it work.  The points were placed without taking the 1/2" loop into consideration, so the dress was still dragging on the ground.  We decided to just have my maid of honor tie the bustle above the loop so that we wouldn't have to leave the dress to be altered one more time.

Okay, so I still managed to ramble and complain a lot.  In short, I was really disappointed with my alterations experience at David's Bridal.  I thought it was expensive (about $200 for a hem and bustle), but I thought I would go with them for convenience and because they specialize in wedding dresses.  Perhaps the fact that it is a new store means that the alterations department doesn't necessarily have a lot of experience with wedding dresses yet.  I wish I had taken the time to shop around a little more.