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| - I feel like I had a series of odd experiences at Vera's. When I walked in with my mom, I was just. plain. tired. of shopping for wedding dresses. Everything was starting to blur into weird and frothy and too matronly or too youthful. I seem to recall walking through the parking lot and having a conversation with my mother that was basically like, "can we just find something already?" and I don't know if that was her talking or me, but maybe we were a little bit hopeful.
We met with an associate to whom I said, I think I'm looking for something a bit structured and modern, and I've been drawn to more solid fabrics like taffeta and she said, ok, and returned with a bunch of ethereal organzas and laces. Alright, fine, you're the boss. But I appreciated that she appeared to think through the selection process, and only bring me one dress at a time, and said "better or worse than the last one?" to help narrow things down instead of the free-for-all that you get elsewhere. And then this weird thing happened where she totally sold me on the lace number. Three days later I was placing my order, fraught with a fair bit of hesitation, but, well, the decision was behind me.
Their alterations team was phenomenal, though the associate who kept tag teaming with the tailor seemed to keep getting in her way. They were able to do an expedited turn around for me so that I could do my two fittings in one long weekend while I was in town. When my mom went to pick up the dress, the train wasn't falling correctly, so she had to work with them a few times to ensure that they could fix it properly. A big frustration was that the sales team and the alterations people don't seem to be in sync in their communication. When I first tried the sample on, I was told that it would be easy to remove the rhinestone "bling" at the front of the dress, and that they could easily swap out the odd random rhinestone buttons at the back. The buttons were a simpler fix thanks to a few random extras they had on hand, but the bling was impossible without completely replacing the satin sash, and they talked me out of making the switch. In the end, it wasn't a big deal to keep it, but being able to switch it out was part of what sold me on the dress to begin with.
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