How far did you drive for alterations?

Any experienced seamstress should be able to do what you want, regardless of never having worked on that exact dress. This is what they do. If it were me, I would check out seamstresses closer to home first.

Then if you can't find anyone closer, or with enough experience, I would go to that one you found an hour away.

It seems like it may be worth it to drive to the seamstress that has actually altered a dress like yours before. An hour isn't a long drive for me; I drive 40 minutes to work one way every day.

I think it's a matter of opinion really. Is your dress complicated to you, or have other seamstresses said that? If the seamstress seems confident, I see no reason to drive an additional hour away.

My seamstress had never altered my particular dress and I had no issues. I ended up needing 7 or 8 fittings so I would not have wanted to go somewhere far.

I would totally drive an hour if it made me feel more confident in how my alterations/vision turned out.

I don’t think an hour is too far at all if it will make you more comfortable to work with someone’s who’s worked on your dress before. I’m actually doing my alterations in my hometown which is about 4-5 hours away form where I live because I don’t trust the services where I live (I know that sounds crazy). Thankfully my dress won’t need too much done to it so it won’t be too many trips.

My seamstress is over an hour and a half from where I live so I think an hour is definitely reasonable for someone that's good! I found a lady 15 minutes from my venue that does amazing bridal alterations and has been in the business for 25 years that was very comfortable altering my dress. It has a ton of detail on it so I wasn't going to give it to just anyone. She's only 30 minutes from FH's hometown so I did my first alterations appointment when we went to his parents' house, and I'll just make my appointments around the times we're planning to be in town.

I had 2 awful seamstresses, so please go with your gut.

2.5 hours 🤣

I would try going with the seamstress that you love, even if they are farther away! The place that I bought my dress at didn’t do alterations either. I got lucky, there was a steamstress that they recommended that was super close and I absolutely loved their work. I definitely would’ve travelled farther if needed. I had a difficult dress to alter and it was soo worth it to go to someone that I trusted to work through the process. I would’ve been so incredibly stressed throughout the entire process if I wasn’t 100% sure about the steamstress.

View Quoted Comment I am also driving 4hrs for my dress alterations.

I'm driving about an hour. My dress shop doesn't have in-house alterations, and very highly recommended this seamstress. There aren't very many people really close to me, and in addition to my dress shop recommending this business, they also have nothing but great reviews online. They also said to expect the process to take 2-3 appointments, so fingers crossed!

My dress boutique is 1 hour away so I've driven there 4 times (dress shopping, first fitting, two alterations appointments) and I'll drive back this Sunday to pick up my dress.

I only say yes in my opinion because I live about an hour plus from my hometown and that's where I ended up getting alterations done because it's the only place I trusted and knew nothing about any of them up here. Granted, I only had to go twice because it wasn't super complicated, but personally it would make me feel a lot better to go somewhere knowing someone has experience with an alteration as big as a wedding dress.

My seamstress is 35 mins away but I definitely would've drove over an hour if had to! I live in the middle of nowhere so I have to drive 35-60 mins to get anywhere (30 mins to the nearest grocery store) so the drive means nothing to me. If this seamstress is the one who can make your vision come true I think its worth the drive!