I posted this in the general Virginia forum, but that board is dead. I thought I'd share it here...
I thought I'd share this here. A few weeks ago, I decided to stop into a charity bridal shop in Lynchburg called Church Street Bridal. I live in Charlottesville, about an hour north of there.
What I found was SHOCKING. Sample gowns with big designer names (think Pnina, Monique Lhuillier, Rivini, Reem Acra, Amsale, Lazarro, etc.) being sold for $300-500. The clearance racks had dresses from $50-200.
I have loads of pictures on my blog and I fear The Knot makes pictures so tiny that there's no point in posting them. Trust me when I say that this place is worth the trip. I post about the place on Wedding Bee and girl from Ohio already drove down and got a Monique Lhuiller for $400 and her veil for $15. A girl from Australia is working with the manager by email to buy a Pnina gown.
Here are links to the blog posts I wrote about the place, which have lots of pictures:
http://bitly.com/ilQznE
http://bit.ly/lRwdwB
http://bit.ly/jGrT0e
If you go, the J. Crew headquarters has two stores there where you can get great deals on wedding gowns, bridesmaids dresses, shoes, etc. They are not outlets, but stores full of catalog returns.
Here's the info for the J. Crew stores: http://www.smallchichome.com/2010/05/trip-to-jcrew-factory.html
Re: Church Street Bridal has samples from that famous NYC salon for $300-500!
133 Invited
BTW, they are having a "blowout" sale on September 10th.
1. Do I need to make an appointment? I saw that they are open very few hours so I'm thinking I don't.
2. Are the dresses sorted at all? Like by size, designer, style... or do we just get there are start going thru them all?
3. Is there anyway to find out what dresses they have in stock before we go?
Thanks to anyone who can answer any, or all, of these questions!
~Ashley
Dresses are sorted by size. You can see pictures of the racks that I took when I went there here: http://bit.ly/r1E6ek
I can tell you off the top of my head what I saw. I tried to take pictures of many of the high end gowns. They have a lot of dresses by the designers that are exclusive to Kleinfeld (Pnina Tornai, Alita Graham, Peter Langer, Henry Roth, Ian Stuart, Eduardo Bon...something).
You can see my iphone pictures from when I went there here:
https://picasaweb.google.com/smallchic/ChurchStreet?authkey=Gv1sRgCIC27KGlrLO68AE
and here:
https://picasaweb.google.com/smallchic/MyCSBPictures?authkey=Gv1sRgCKjTjNvtuJ6dnQE
~Ashley