The Wedding Dresser — Local services in Baltimore

EDIT: photos have been added and are from my final fitting. The last photo shows how the dress fit once properly tailored by another shop.

I was going to wait to write this review until after my 9/21/24 wedding, but felt it was imperative that I post sooner rather than later for the benefit of other brides. I will add photos of my dresses after our wedding.

I deeply love and respect small business owners, and understand the weight reviews have, so it pains me to leave this. I brought my dress to Susan and her team at their Baltimore location in mid-July 2024. My dress needed to be hemmed, taken in at the bodice, and straps shortened. I was quoted $1400. While expensive, I believe in Susan’s mission of paying her employees a living wage and believed that this price reflected the high quality of their alterations. I also brought Susan a gown to be shortened to tea length, let out, and sleeves removed for my rehearsal dinner. I was quoted $1000.

I picked up my wedding gown on Saturday, 9/14 after the prior 3 fittings in which I was expressing concerns with extra fabric in the side bust. In previous fittings Susan and her team attempted to add a dart to correct this problem, which caused the bust line to come to a point. I am grateful for their work to then remove the dart and try another approach to correct the issue extra side bust fabric issue.

When I picked up my wedding gown, the problem of the extra fabric at the side bust was not corrected. Furthermore the cups were added to the dress without appropriately stretching the fabric around the cup, causing a bunching effect of the fabric. I picked up my dress, having paid an extra $100 for an extra fitting (per Susan’s contract), and promptly brought my dress to another seamstress who, luckily, was kind enough to fit me in for a rush appointment less than a week before my wedding day. The bodice fit was easily corrected by this seamstress in one fitting.

My rehearsal dinner dress was provided to me for pickup with a lining layer left raw, which I will now finish at home on my own machine. The horse hair hem of my wedding dress is not snug to the bottom of my hem, as it originally was, and in some locations, the hem doesn’t appear straight. In one of my last fittings, Susan pointed out that the straps of my dress started to turn grey, which she claimed was from handling the dress a lot through alterations. She said I could get the dress cleaned if I wanted, but I declined. I understand how this was possible, but it seems that some measures should be taken to avoid discoloring wedding dresses while working on them.

Susan repeatedly commented on the difficulty of working with designer dresses, and misidentified my dress fabric as crepe (it is silk mikado). I found it troubling that someone with her level of experience made these comments.

I believe Susan was well-intentioned in her efforts to ease my anxiety throughout the process, and truly do appreciate the intention. Multiple times, she insinuated that I was experiencing “bridal psychosis”, meaning that I was picking apart my dress given the pressures of being a bride. I agree - being a bride is stressful, and can lead us to second-guess ourselves. However, this phrase is inappropriate and gaslighting. My dress had serious problems, which another seamstress agreed with and promptly acted on. Furthermore, making light of mental illness in this manner is insulting.

This experience left me more stressed than I have ever been in my life. I hardly slept or ate these last few weeks because in the two weeks before my wedding, I wasn’t sure if my dress could be saved. I had nearby bridal shops holding samples for me, as until finding a new seamstress, I thought I would have to buy a whole new dress again.

Multiple times through my months of working with Susan and her team, I was asked to write a review. I’m deeply sorry it has to be this one. I appreciate the opportunity to work with Susan, Joan, and Joy, and genuinely wish them well and success with future brides’ dresses. Perhaps I was...

I wish I had better things to say. I had the most stressful and uncomfortable experience with Susan, who owns the studio. I brought in my dress months ahead (early March for an early June wedding) and ended up having to visit 5 times, and it still wasn't altered correctly. Susan offered to take $50 off and drop the dress off at my house. I initially agreed but felt that $50 was too little, so I tried calling, texting and emailing Susan to discuss this. I heard nothing for two days, until I called her Brooklyn studio and happened to catch her walking in. She told me she'd received the email and seemed bewildered about how upset I was. This was about a week before my wedding. Susan dropped off my dress at my house 6 days before my wedding--I did appreciate the home delivery. Unfortunately, even on the 6th try, there was still a bit of tulle that was too long, and there was one side of a removable snap still sewed to the top front (the snaps for my straps, which we added, were on the inside lining of the dress). The button for my bustle came off halfway through my reception, but a friend saved the day with two safety pins to at least keep the back of the dress off the floor.

Throughout the process, things were forgotten, undone (including my bustle--someone supposedly snipped off the bustle that was added at the studio), redone or done incorrectly. Susan has a few very friendly staff, but she was often rude and demeaning to them in front of customers. It was uncomfortable to say the least. She would rarely, if ever, admit something went wrong on her end. The best I got was, "It seems someone hemmed your train." Someone? If you're employing other people to do your work for you, you need to take notes and make sure they do what was planned. When I asked about the train the next appointment, I was told that actually no, the hem had just been basted.

This was one of the worst customer service experiences I've ever had. I'm glad my dress fit on the day, but for all the stress, gaslighting, lack of communication or attention to detail, and general disdain for her employees, I would do it all over again with pretty much any alterations person.

I've seen some of Susan's replies to others' reviews, and while I'm sure some reviews are unfair, let me just warn others considering working with her that I certainly wouldn't take the chance. I'm glad some people had great experiences, but I wasn't...

Susan Ruddie, the owner of The Wedding Dresser, charges predatory prices for reasons I cannot comprehend. I brought my dress to Susan and agreed to pay her $1600 for quite a few alterations that you can see in my attached receipt. I paid her half up front and left my dress with her. Work in the service industry was very slow and I could not afford to go through with the remaining alterations so I called Susan to ask her to please stop where she was. I told her I would pay for whatever had been done but that I would like to try to have my mother-in-law alter the rest of my dress instead to save money. She told me that was no problem and that the hem was finished and that she would reimburse me for whatever work her team had yet to complete. I trusted Susan and picked up my dress from her staff, who were always nice.

When I picked up my dress, the hem was not finished, only the inner layers of the dress had been hemmed and they'd been hemmed WRONG! The top layer was the shortest and they got longer from there (see attached). I called Susan, assuming it had to be a mistake, but she refused to issue me any refund or even fix her mistake. She told me that hemming three layers of the dress took so many hours that $750 was accurate, which was totally unreasonable because ALL the alterations were supposed to cost 1600 and that was less than 1/3 of the total work, so that doesn't make any sense.

In any case, I paid with a credit card, and they are helping me file a claim against Susan, so I am simply writing this to help others.

Do yourself a favor: go see an old school tailor, with a less flashy shop, who charges a less predatory price. The seamstress working on my dress now, charged me 1/8 of the price: $230. YES, I AM SERIOUS. She was just as professional and twice as kind. Weddings are expensive enough. Use that money for a pretty wedding...