Shops that won’t let you take photos

[LoveInTokyo]

I’m wedding dress shopping at the moment and have found that some dress shops are very reluctant to let you take photos.

On Saturday I went to three. The first one said we could only take pictures of one or two favourites, but turned a blind eye while we pretty much took pictures of them all. The second shop said only the favourite, but I think we managed to do two. The third shop said no photos at all under any circumstances. My friend took some anyway until the woman saw her and told her off like she was a little girl.

I am tempted to email her and say look, I am not going to spend this much money on a dress if I can’t take photos to see what it looks like on me, and the moment you said no photos was the moment I decided you weren’t getting my business. (But I am going to wait until I’ve found my dress just to make sure I definitely don’t need to go back to that shop and actually buy one!)

I have two more on Saturday. One called to confirm the appointment and when I asked about photos she said no photos. So I explained why that was a problem for me and she basically said the manager is very strict about it but if we are discreet enough we might get away with it.

I have now emailed the other shop to ask in advance.

Wtf.

How prevalent is this? I get that they don’t want you to go and buy the same dress cheaper on the internet, or have a seamstress make a copy, but I know the names and prices of these dresses, so I could do that anyway. All this does is make me not want to buy anything in their shop!

All of the shops I booked appointments with had this policy, precisely to stop people taking the picture and having the dress made somewhere else. The shop I bought my dress from allowed photos only if you bought the dress, and then only of that dress. It's a fairly standard policy as far as I can tell.

Really? I find that absolutely barking.

I can easily find a picture of the dress on the internet and have it made to my measurements if I want to. But I’m not going to buy a dress from a shop if I can’t show my mum what it looks like on me.

Is this a recent thing?

Nobody I know who got married in the last few years seems to have had this problem.

I've worked in the industry. It's standard policy precisely BECAUSE not only brides but competitors posing as brides take photos and reproduce (poorer quality usually) copies, sometimes even selling them claiming they are the original. Given how much you can get for a single dress (£100's if not £1000's) it's not surprising it's ah area rife with counterfeiting.

Bridal boutiques are really struggling, due to the economy, cheap internet dresses and fewer people Marrying

You were rude to take photos of dresses when you'd specifically been asked not to.

You talk about pictures being available on the internet but you'll often find designers deliberately organise those pictures so that certain identifying details can't be seen. A certain way of stitching, number of buttons in a particular area etc

Well where I am it seems some shops will let you and some won’t, so the alternative is checking in advance and not bothering with shops which won’t let you take photos.

There is literally no way I am going to spend that much money on a dress if I can only see what it looks like on a model (which has usually been photoshopped anyway).

But you're not only seeing what it looks like on a model. You can try it on and see what it looks like on you.

My mum and my bridesmaids can’t because they live in another country, and I value their opinion.

Also, I’ve been looking at the pictures I have from Saturday over and over, and it’s really helping me to figure out what works on me and what doesn’t. In some of them I can see myself from angles I couldn’t see in the mirror, or I can see details I didn’t notice at the time, because this wedding dress shopping is quite overwhelming.

I can’t do that if I don’t have photos, so I’m never going to have the confidence to take the plunge and buy something.

That’s why I’m now thinking about boycotting shops with this policy - I don’t want to waste my time or theirs.

www.missbushbridalblog.co.uk/no-photos/

That blog post is more than a little patronising, naughtyfrog. Ban photos if you want to protect your business (although from this potential customer’s point of view you are losing business rather than protecting it), but let’s not kid ourselves that it’s for the customer’s own good.

I am not an idiot. I know that I look like a total dork in these photos and that none of the dresses had been altered to fit. That’s not the point. I’m smart enough to see past those things and consider the dress for what it is and what it could be.

For example, the first dress I tried on was a maybe in the shop but it now a potential yes if the neckline can be altered. And of the three shops I went to, that one is by far the most likely to get my business.

Yeah, I've been to two and the first one was happy for us to take pictures, but not of certain designers, like Maggie Sottero (they were OBVIOUSLY the dresses I was drawn too!). The second initially said no photos at all, until I found the one and then she encouraged it!

I just don't understand the reasoning behind it, because if you wanted to copy a design, you really could, without needing to take in the flesh photos. Plus.... nobody seems to listen anyway

*drawn to! Grrrr

I was just thinking about this as I tried on dresses on sunday and they said no photos "for copyright reasons". And I just read that article and I strongly disagree!
I'm not an idiot, I know on the day I won't look like I did at 4:30 on a sunday afternoon wearing cat socks and big black pants and no make-up under my dress... But you can just google the make and name of the dress and find it online... so no photos wouldn't stop me getting a knock-off version (exactly what I'm doing), and it's nice to have something to reflect back on.

I went to two shops, both allowed me to take photos. Lots of them. From the first shop we even FaceTimed with my sister, who lives overseas. No photos is just silly!

Glad it’s not just me who thinks this is daft.

By the end of this week I will have been to five shops and it’s unfortunate that four of them will have given me their time and not made any money from it, but that’s the way it goes, unfortunately.

I fully intend to buy a dress from one of them - after mulling over the options in my own time with photos before I make my decision.

The shop I got my dress from let me try on as many as I wanted and take as many photos as I wanted. They were amazing.