Based on the 5 star reviews that this alteration place had, I brought my wedding dress for alterations, and customization/ add on of lace detail that I had purchased. I initially met with Karyn and she was kind, confident, and excited to work on my dress. I brought the dress to her in early January for a wedding in late March. Frequent meetings were created and initially, I did not have concerns about her work.

Fast forward to four weeks before the wedding and she consistently canceled and delayed my dress appointments and was not finalizing pieces as per our agreement. I became increasingly apprehensive but still did not know to take my dress elsewhere, based on her reviews and her confidence that all would be okay. In the final 2 weeks before my wedding, my dress still required significant structural amendments in order to stay on my body, in addition to pieces such as sleeves, that she did not complete. With two weeks before my wedding day, the dress continued to not fit. She confirmed that she would do whatever was needed, including closing the shop early, to get it done. She pushed my final fitting to 6 days before my wedding day. I called 2 days prior, and confirmed with one of her assistants that my dress would be 100% complete at this final appointment. I was reassured that it would. When I went in, my dress was far from complete, and fit worse than it did in prior appointments. I was panicked and began to cry. I asked what we were going to do. She told me “I want to cry too” and that she did not know how to make the dress fit me correctly. The bodice did not fit, she had taken the dress in too much in an attempt to compensate for the poor fit and to hold it up, and had not added the sleeves and belt that we had agreed upon months ago. I left, crying and panicked, and she told me she would try to work on it overnight. I asked her not to do that, and that I would come to pick up the dress in the morning. She did not listen to this request, and made the dress even smaller, and added the sleeves in a way that my next seamstress had to rip off just to get the dress on me.

In the morning I came to get my dress and was told that I was not allowed to try it on that day. I didn’t question this, as it didn’t matter at that point, and asked for a refund that I could use toward a new seamstress, who I would have to pay a rush fee. She responded “you aren’t getting a penny back from me, the dress fits someone perfectly and I have spent hours on it”. She then turned to her associate and asked them to get security. I asked, continuing to speak quietly and respectfully, if that was for someone else. She replied “No, it is for you, I want you to leave.” I asked why she would bother with security rather than just ask her customer to leave and then I promptly left, sobbing. The next day she texted me, apologizing for her behavior and provided me with a refund.

I found a seamstress who agreed to work on my dress with short notice. My new seamstress was shocked at the state of the dress, sharing that in 25 years, she has never seen such damage done to a wedding dress during alterations. She expressed concerns that Karyn “did not know how to diagnose what was wrong with the dress in order to fix it”. I paid thousands more than I had budgeted for, in order to be able to wear my dress on my wedding day. She had to stay overnight and put in over 30 hours in 2 days to get it done. Just to get my dress to zip, she had to completely tear apart my dress. The picture included is 48 hours before my wedding day after the new seamstress started her work.

This was an incredibly stressful and unnecessary situation.

I hope to prevent a future person from going through this horrific experience.