Limes with Orange

Future brides… be very careful when choosing a seamstress. Just because she seems nice when you first meet her and she does good work, does not mean that you will have a good experience working with her. It doesn't matter how good the work is if your seamstress refuses to tell you how much it will cost for the little extras you enquire about. And do NOT accept, "it'll just be a little bit more" as an answer. My friend's initial quote was $200 and her final invoice—that was supposed to "just be a little bit more"—was $530. (Can we say 165% higher than the initial estimate, boys and girls?) And then when my friend paid her $550 in cash, the seamstress didn't have any change and simply kept the extra $20 for herself.

And that's not the worst of it.

Beware of any seamstress who, when you call her from the mall unable to find what she sent you to look for, tells you to wait there so she can meet up with you and go shopping and that it's really no problem at all… without telling you that she charges $30/hour for shopping trips.

And if you ask your seamstress to work on your veil, make sure that you know for a fact that she is capable of working on veils. Otherwise, you might suffer the devastation of having your beautiful veil damaged when it only needed a tiny bead every six inches along the hem rather than an orgy of beads and sequins, with the work resulting in a dime-sized hole in the veil.

Then god forbid that you call your seamstress on any of that stuff. Because no matter how polite you are, no matter how much you preface it by saying that you think she's a very nice person and does good work but you just have some questions about the invoice… well, there are some people who apparently jump to the defensive so quickly that they perceive that as a personal attack.

According to these people, suggesting that they be up front about their business charges seems to be considered offensive and apparently amounts to telling them how to run their business. And speaking firmly and not backing down is apparently tantamount to yelling at them. And I guess that correcting them when they put words in your mouth is considered a disrespectful interruption (regardless of how much more disrespectful the words being put into your mouth are). And it would appear that some people are under the delusion that being called a freelancer is as scathing an insult as some four or five letter words that I can think of… all I can say to that is try looking it up in the dictionary. I am at a total loss as to how any self-employed individual could consider "freelancer" an insult unless they simply don't understand what the word means. In which case, it's their own ignorance so why the heck are they getting so ridiculously mad at me? So mad in fact that the seamstress in our case decided not to drop the dress and veil off when she promised (mere days before the wedding) because she claimed to be afraid that I would be present. (Really? Really??? I wasn't rude. I didn't yell. I was perfectly civil, logical and professional. Enough with the bullshit, thank you very much.)

So make sure that you're dealing with someone who knows how to run the business side of their business. Design talent is NOT enough. Otherwise, you might become one of those wedding horror stories. (Or if you happen to have a Maid of Honour to deal with these people for you, be very appreciative of her for sparing you this grief… otherwise her efforts to save the wedding experience for you will pretty much have ruined it for her.)

Labels: fashion, rant, special days