Attire & Accessories Forum

Ripped-off + second thoughts? (long-ish)

Anyone else buy a "private collection" dress?

I picked up my dress today after having some iffy feelings about the shop throughout the process (took my dress 8 months to show up!)... tried it on, liked it, but not sure I am head over heels in love with it, but sort of brushed that under the rug and thought I was just being nervous and second-guessing my choice.

But it was bugging me all day, and when I bought the dress the shop told us it was from a private collection, they only sell 3 of each dress. Stupid gaggle of girls were like "oh, cool." Only later do I start reading about all of the scams out there... and so today I checked the tag on the dress and the tag says "Private Collection" as if that is the designer. Can't find anywhere online and I have a gut feeling that it's a less expensive, not-designer dress that we still paid 1,100 dollars for and I'm sort of sick to my stomach about it.

The dress was more than I had wanted to spend, but we liked it after trying on 15 dresses so bought it!! In hindsight, if I had knew I was going to spend that much I could have gotten an ACTUAL designer gown and would have had a lot more to choose from... so now I"m confused about my feelings about the dress...

My mom paid for the dress... should I be honest with her? Or just suck it up? I'm confused. I feel like if I loved it as much as I should love "the one" I wouldn't care if I got ripped off or where it came from. But It's just really irking me that it seems like bridal shops use the "Exclusive" private label line to get unsuspecting brides to pay lots of money for a dress they can buy online for less than half the price. 

If you google "private collection" a bunch of wholesale wedding sites come up. and If I search the "style" number online... nothing...

Just need to vent and I thank you for listening!! anyone else have experience like this??

Re: Ripped-off + second thoughts? (long-ish)

  • Oh that sounds like a rough situation. Honestly, to me it sounds like you may have settled for a dress because you may have either been tired of trying on dresses, or something like that.

    When you imagine yourself on your wedding day, is that the dress (or the type of dress) you imagine yourself wearing? Private collection, and all that aside, is that what your vision is of yourself on your wedding day?


    If not, then I would speak to the shop and see if you can get some more information about where it came from, etc. I'm betting they won't tell you much, but you never know.


    If this was my situation and I really didn't like the dress, I would tell my mom. I would then sell the dress, get what I could for it (but be honest about how you don't know where it came from... hey, there are some people that would probably still buy it), and go buy the one that you fall in love with.

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  • My daughter had a similar situation. She bought a dress that we were told was by the store's exclusive designer.  After looking around at gowns online, we found the gown was a copy of the Melissa Sweet Mila dress.  This dress was also copied by Marisa.  The dress she bought was about $1,000 cheaper than the Melissa Sweet dress and after she saw the original dress by Melisaa Sweet, she actually liked her "private label" version better.  It was different fabric and much lighter than the original dress.  I think she plans to sell it after the wedding.  However she won't get as much for it as a private label.  She is also going to change a few things to alter the design a little.

    As long as you love the dress, don't worry about who made it.  Just enjoy it! 

  • This is a pretty common practice, actually.  Dress shops need you to buy from them rather than just using them to try on things that you intend to buy online later, so they use in-house style numbers and don't disclose the designer's information.  Plus, $1K is on the low end of average for a wedding dress; "designer" gowns are usually upwards of $5K.  I wouldn't worry too much about it.  A lot of women don't "fall in love" with a dress, so don't put too much stock in the fact that you didn't.
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    Sometimes I feel like people think that brides are delicate little flower princesses who get all dressed up and pretty for one special moment of their dreams, when really they're just normal people who just happen to be getting married. Things shouldn't have to be sugar-coated for grown-ass women. -mstar284
  • Here's a blog entry from Once Wed where they talk about dresses in a Private Label runway show: http://tinyurl.com/ykdold2

    I honestly would stop worrying about it.
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  • I think the whole wedding dress business is kind of scam in general.  I love my dress to pieces, but it definitely wasn't worth  $1200 worth of fabric and labor from David's Bridal.  If you were spending over a thousand dollars on a dress, you would make sure the fabric was all silk, and the stitching would be perfect.  The salespeople would also be really nice to you, because that's probably a pretty big commission.  However, when we go to buy wedding dresses, we get lied to and pick pocketed by the salespeople.  It's craziness. 

    If you really don't like your dress, then you should sell it and buy another.  Try on dresses at David's Bridal, then search online for a new or gently used version of the dress.  It took all of three days for my dress in my size to pop up on ebay.  It cost me half of what DB would have charged, and I didn't have to pay sales tax.

    P.S. On your wedding day, no one ever asks about the label of the dress  :)
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  • Sounds like you just wanted a fancy brand name or to sound cool that you got an "exclusive" dress, and now that you don't think it's so exclusive, you don't like it as much.



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