Wedding dresses! Calling all brides

[Gardeninging]

Hi

When you bought your wedding dress, how much did you set aside for alterations? How much did you end up paying and what did they do?

Do you mind if I ask where abouts you had the the dress altered roughly (Up North/down South/in Manchester, London, Wales etc)

Did you find the price for the work reasonable or a total rip off?

I'm just doing a bit of preliminary research about wedding dress alterations, I hope that's ok xx

I didn't. I bought a lovely dress off JJ House and I deliberately got one without loads of structure and it fitted like a glove. Total cost was about £180 but you wouldn't have known.

£500 ish.depends on your dress. The more expensive like lace etc the more time and work will have to go into it

Alterations of a wedding dress takes time and skill. A hem on a wedding dress is not usually one layer to measure, cut and sew. There is a minimum of two, can be up to eight. Hand beading is labour intensive, sewing side seams may not be one seam each side, you may have linings and corsetry. I know because I used to do it. It is time consuming and has to have experience. That's what you are paying for. However, I suggest shopping around and look for recommendations maybe?

It's definitely worth getting the best possible fitting dress to start with, especially if heavily decorated. It's not a rip off, it may be several days skilled work, if a lot of reconstruction is needed.

Sorry but this is insane. There are very few things I could justify spending £500 on, a dress for a wedding maybe at a push, but to alter a dress that you have already spent money on that you are going wear once. Sorry what?

I’ve just had 2 daughters getting married and I put £500 each by for the alterations and both charged around £300

Mind if I ask - are you oop north or daan south? Xx

I’m in Scotland 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿, and I could do the alterations myself as I worked in Jaeger Tailoring for 20yrs and have been sewing professionally for 49ers but it was too important to leave it to the ( woman that owns a sewing machine) i did alter my second Mother of the Bride outfit as it was the Hemline only , I made sure I lost weight.

I paid £310 for a layer of tulle skirt taking out, and a cape style embellishment made out of it, dress length and straps taking up slightly, and a couple of embellishments moving after fitting.
East Yorkshire

I got my dress made. Found a sempstress, had a discussion about the design, bought the fabric, had the fittings and it was perfect. Absolutely perfect.

It’s not hard and your result will be better.

I agree that it seems mad to pay £3-500 on top of the price of the dress (I appreciate that it’s lot of work so I am not suggesting that those doing the work are overcharging).

I think if you’re going to have a seamstress they might as well start from scratch.

Like @TheSandgroperI had my dress made for me. I was lucky in that someone volunteered to do it and I knew she had the skill (she had made my sister’s wedding dress a few years earlier).

We went shopping for material together and I found a couple of patterns and said I liked bits of one and bits of another and she just worked it out from there.