Warning against buying wedding dress online!

purplekitty

Hey everyone,
Can i please stress to everyone not to buy your wedding dress online,
I'm not talking bout buying someone else's pre-used wedding dress, i'm talking bout those companies that recreate a designer dress for a small fee.

I used "Sea Bridal Design" to recreate a beautiful Vera Wang gown for me for $400, just as my first attempt at buying a dress, as i am a terrible shopper.

The first hint that the site is dodge is that they use the designer's original photos and models as the product picture.

I would recommend that you ask them to send you a picture of your final result wedding dress before they ship it out to you, as believe me, they are quick enough to demand photographs of their dress to be sent back to them when you put in an complaint.

I have supplied photograph examples of what my dress should have been and what i recieved in the post.

I have recently found my dream dress in amarra's bridal store in Monesterevn and could not be happier.

Just dont want anyone else to be conned!!!! Dont do it, i have lost all my money and they are not complying at all

D3PO

I dont mean to be smart but the site isnt dodge if you ordered and got something it would be dodge if you ordered and got nothing.

The fact that you were dissapointed with the end result is entirely different to it being dodge.

Anybody ordered online from one of these sites without having first done a lot of searching online for reviews of their work is frankly asking for trouble.

and as the old adage goes. If something looks to good to be true it usually is.

John Mason

is it just me or do they both look similar?

i mean they are not going to be identifcal but all the same

Moonbeam

They look the same to me.
If you thoguht the site looked suspect then why did you order from them?
That dress is gorgeous btw.

purplekitty

irishbird wrote: »

is it just me or do they both look similar?

i mean they are not going to be identifcal but all the same

One is gray and the one that was made was a light lilac colour. and the bodice work is completely different, and there is no black ribbon attached.

I am aware of my mistake i have made ordering online, and would prefere not to have any criticism or smart comments made about my purchase, i wrote the thread to spread the awareness of how wrong these online wedding dress websites can be, as i had searched for opinions on the matter before i purchased my dress and not found any irish forums

unfortunaly for me it did not work out and i lost my money TO THE DODGY website, but i hope others the best of luck if they are applying online in
future.
But i would recommend going to bridal stores and physically picking out your dress

purplekitty

Moonbeam wrote: »

If you thoguht the site looked suspect then why did you order from them?

In retrospect i can see that they looked suspect,
i thought they were legit cause they had a "full money refund policy" (pah!!!!), and had good correspondance with me before purchasing.
But i learned the hard way.

tricky D

This is a dodgy operation alright.

The domain registration info is hidden behind an anonymising registrar.

It is hosted in Malaysia suggesting sweatshop.

There's is no postal address listed anywhere on the site.

They use a gmail address for order tracking and other contact.

Bad english.

All adds up to an untrustworthy rating.

Acoshla

There are loads of these sites out there, almost all based in China, all using the original photos of the dresses that they copy, that doesn't make the one you used "dodgy", that's what they all do, you just got a bad copy. I have researched buying dresses this way, took a chance on one last year after reading good reviews and got a beautiful evening gown custom made for €50. They were more than helpful, the English in the emails was poor but they still understood me perfectly (except for one thing but that was my fault) and were more than helpful when the colour I ordered was out of stock.

If anyone is considering ordering from these sites you just have to research them well, I have two that I am considering ordering from, I have seen actual dresses ordered and received by Irish customers and that is really the only way to do it, as well as reading as many reviews as possible.

Oh and the dress I ordered was made slightly too long for me, a miscommunication because I was being awkward, they were very apologetic and asked me to send it back and they would fix it and pay for shipping, I just got a local dressmaker to take it up the couple of inches, but they were more than helpful. So your post shouldn't be about ordering online, just about not ordering from that particular site.

Edit: And to be honest, when getting a Vera Wang copy for $400 you can't possibly expect it to be identical in style and quality to a dress that would cost thousands. It's like wanting a custom designed 5 tier cake with an intricate design for the price of a bakery slab cake.

tinkerbell

^^ What the others said.

In fairness, I don't understand in the first place how people think that going onto these replica/counterfeit websites is a good idea. It is not. Why would you waste $400 on some cheapo copy? $400 is a lot of money for a fake wedding dress. Ok it might be cheap compared to the $10k price tag for a Vera Wang, however $400 by itself for a copy is ridiculous, I don't know how people justify paying for that.

If you wanted a Vera Wang dress, you should've bought a Vera Wang dress. If you couldn't afford the price tag, then you should've bought a non-high-end-designer dress in the high-street. There are plenty of wedding dresses out there. Getting a counterfeit/copy of it is a dumb idea as (a) it's illegal if it's advertised as a Vera Wang (if it is advertised as "inspired by" then I don't think that's illegal but it's still a dumb idea) and (b) you are never going to get the actual dress you want because so much goes into a designer dress, they are created extremely careful by hand, using beautiful fabrics, not mass produced overpriced crap.

No amount of telling people that websites are dodgy will not stop people using them. Some people see a good deal and are all over it and think nothing bad can happen.

You learned the hard way, but in fairness it was your own fault. Shop more wisely in future.

watna

I bought my dress online and I'm really pleased with it. It's a copy of a dress I liked with some changes made (which I asked for). I got some more work done on it when it arrived too. Yes, I would have preferred the original dress but my budget just wouldn't allow it. I'm really glad I did - I love my dress. It was never going to be identical to the real dress, that would be impossible. If you order online it's a copy and you need to be aware of that before ordering. The seller I bought it off told me a number of times it would only be 85 - 90% similar. I did a lot of research online before I ordered and spent a long time emailing the seller, including sending them lots of photos.

I'm sorry that it hasn't worked out for you but my dress was a lot simpler with a lot less room for problems. I would have been very reluctant to order such a complicated dress online, especially given the colour. It would be impossible to get the colour matching and for a Vera Wang dress, so much work goes into them no copy could be even close to identical. To be honest, they don't look that disimilar to me. I think it looks like not a bad copy actually, apart from maybe the colour (which look very similar in the photos)

Like other posters have said, if it look too good to be true, then it probably is. If you order online you need to be smart about it and expect that you will need to make some compromises. For me, and the wedding that we are having, those compromises have worked well. I was also in a position that if necessary, I could have bought the original dress if I really had to. I'm glad I didn't though because I feel the differences in the dress make it a bit more original and a bit more me. I didn't find very many wedding dresses that I liked in the bridal shops, they all looked very similar to me, so my choice was quite limited which is why I decided to see what an online dress would be like. I've posted pics in another thread here of the dress I got.

lackofyou

I always try some online store,and I am happy with them

Moonbeam

I was wondering are you selling the purple dress?