The Town Shop, Poughkeepsie, NY -- A+ (dress), A+ (alterations), C... and that's generous! (service) I don’t even think I have the energy to get into this, but I’ll give it a shot.
My dress, my mom’s dress, and the bridesmaids and female groomsperson dresses were all purchased from the Town Shop. At first, they were great. The day I bought my dress I was in the store 4 hours! Yes, 4 hours, and that wasn’t my first visit to the store. The entire time, Kathy (I believe she is one of the owners), was so patient with me. I kept apologizing for how long I was there, and she kept assuring me that it was ok. This was huge because some of the other stores I went to were very strict about the hour time slot they give to each bride. A couple months later when my dress came in they were still very nice, but soon after that they changed. Coincidentally, this was when everything was paid for. It seemed like they were nice until they got all their money.
Two of my bridesmaids received their dresses in the wrong size. The owner of the store, Gary, blamed this on my girls because they had their measurements done elsewhere and then called them in. Not once did he take accountability for what happened. One of the girls got the dress a couple of sizes too big and the Town Shop altered it free of charge for her. The other girl is a size a 10 and they ordered a size 4 for her. They said this was completely her fault, but based on her measurements and the Alfred Angelo size chart, they should have caught this! With 8 weeks until the wedding a new dress had to be ordered and there wasn’t enough material in the dress to let it out. This became a big issue because it was for my BM who lives in Hawaii and it takes forever to ship stuff there. We were worried that the dress wouldn’t be in on time, and the Town Shop just kept telling me to hope for the best. Whenever my BM called the store the discuss the issue they gave her an attitude, she gave it right back and after a couple of weeks the Town Shop called me to tell me what was going on and to tell my friend to stop calling them. It was all a lot of unnecessary BS!
I also had some issues with my dress, however, it was really no one’s fault. My dress was a mermaid and it seemed to distort my body, especially around the stomach. I don’t have the best shape in the world, but I am small and one thing I do not have is a tummy, yet my dress made it look like I did. My mom, sister, and two close friends all agreed to this but no one in the store would admit it. I left each fitting in tears because I hated how my dress fit. Each time they said it would be better but nothing changed. I really do not think this could be blamed on alterations, as those women are AMAZING and tried something different everytime. I think it was just the style of the dress. When I left my 3rd (supposed to be my final) fitting hysterical they said they could try one more thing. They decided to extend the boning in the dress and they suggested I get a SPANX (I already had something similar to a SPANX from Victoria’s Secret, but it never helped). After searching all over Poughkeepsie for SPANX in my size and coming up with nothing, I found that Target has a brand made by SPANX that worked out perfectly. Finally, at my 4th fitting, with the extended boning and “SPANX” my dress fit perfect. Oh, what I failed to mention was that at my 3rd fitting, which was just over week before the wedding, Gary, one of the owners said to me, “that’s it, your wedding is next week and you clearly don’t like your dress, what are you going to do about it? Let’s just get you another dress” What was I going to do about it??? I told him that I loved my dress but I didn’t like the way it fit. I was saying that all along. He then said that nothing could be done (thankfully this is when alterations intervened and came up with the solution), and I should pick out another dress and he would throw mine out (think he was being a little dramatic?!). I wasn’t sure how I felt, but I toyed with the idea anyway. I pointed to a gorgeous dress that I probably would have bought if it was there in October when I got mine. He said it was out of my budget, so I asked him what he would do for to make it within my budget. He wasn’t willing to do anything, which made me realize, he really had no intention in fixing the issue in the first place.