Louise Kegley

I had my dress and 2 of the bridesmaids dresses altered by Louise after hearing such rave reviews on the knot. Honestly, I was disappointed. Since I was planning from out of town I dropped off my dress in August. She did some pinning on my dress and then we discussed the bridesmaids dresses. The girls wanted to shorten them and add straps so we discussed the length and strap size and she pinned theirs all up. The girls were also worried about bra straps showing so she said she would put a hook in the back to hold the bra straps down. We were pleased and excited. My next fitting was the Saturday a week before my wedding. She hadn't done anything to my dress, which was fine because it ended up needing to be taken in more. My sister came with me to pick up her dress and though it had been shortened, there were no straps. We asked Louise about it and she had apparently made the straps but had forgotten to put them on. She said no problem and that my sister should come back with me and we made a new appointment for Tuesday. Tuesday the hem and bustle were perfect I was a little surprised to see that the bra cups still had not been sewn in, and though she had taken my dress in, it still needed to be taken in a pinch more. My sisters dress had the straps, but not the bra strap holder that we had discussed in August. Next appointment Friday (do you see a trend?). Friday morning we went in and I couldn't get the dress zipped up. This is 3 days before my wedding. I almost lost it. She had taken it in way too much. She couldn't fix it immediately because her power was out for some unknown reason. She called me later that day and I again raced across town to try it on. Still too tight. She tried to approach the fit of the dress another way and when I came back on Saturday afternoon it fit. One day before my wedding. I was a nervous wreck. Not only did all this stress me out, but it severely cut into the time that I needed to get many other wedding preparations completed. In the end, the dress fit pretty well. I'd give the actual fit a B+, for how much work we put into it, it still didn't stay up properly. Also, though it wasn't noticeable to anyone but me, after the amount of sewing and seam ripping that went on, I could see that the side seams were pretty worn and beat up, which made me sad considering I hadn't worn the dress yet. A point on the bustle broke really early which meant a million people wanting to help by sticking pins in my dress and the overlay is now destroyed. All in all, Louise did a pretty good job. The dress looked great, the bridesmaids dresses looked great and the pocket squares that she made for the guys from the dress fabric looked great, but I think she is getting really scatter-brained and it made things more stressful than they needed to be. Put simply, as my sister said, she needs to start writing things down.