With the words “made to measure” thrown around the internet when you’re looking for bridesmaid dresses many brides think they can order online and get the absolute perfect fitting dress delivered to your doorstep. But then you hear about the horror stories where dresses are 6 inches too small, or they’ve come too short and the seamstress can’t lengthen them so how come a made to measure service can go so terribly wrong?
There are various reasons why the dresses won’t fit when they arrive, it could be that the bridesmaids have put on or lost weight since the time they were measured or it could be they were measured incorrectly (or guessed their measurements). It’s not uncommon for a bridesmaid to email the bride with her measurements – when she’s really decided to look on wikipedia for the standard size 12 measurements and just send those because she can’t find a tape measure and her knickers say size 12 so that’s all the proof she needs. Unfortunately most everyday clothes (especially knickers) are elasticated to fit a multitude of body shapes and sizes, so a size 16 girl can often fit into size 12 clothes but the elastic will stretch a good 4 inches. Bridesmaid dresses are made with non-elasticated fabrics, so if they are 4″ too small, there’s no stretch in it to make it bigger.
If you’re ordering from a Chinese factory in Feb-April they tend to have a lot of new workers that they’ve taken on after the Chinese new year, its normal for the factories to have to train up new workers from scratch with a sewing machine so they tend to keep the really cheap online orders for the new workers to make it cost effective for the factorys profits. Unfortunately this can mean a lot of dresses in this period are made incorrectly especially as it’s their busiest time of year for orders. Workers can often misinterpret the measurements between inches and centimeters – making tight or short dresses.
The other problem with made to measure dresses is that every bridesmaid is different. Although two ladies might have the same measurements, one might be muscular and the other could be busty – so the same dress will not fit them both because it won’t be shaped correctly. You will most likely need a local seamstress to pin your bridesmaids and alter the dresses for the perfect fit, most only charge £10-30 depending on the amount of work involved and they will be far more reliable than risking is with a Chinese factory. Some bridal shops in the UK offer free size alterations and allow you to buy your bridesmaid dresses online to help reduce costs, giving you the choice of the internet but the quality of a bridal shop.
