Brautpunkt.

If I could redo one thing about my wedding, it would be buying my dress from Brautpunkt. I do not say this lightly, and I hope my experience is a cautionary tale for any future bride.

Initially, I was thrilled by the available selection of dresses. That said, you can find many of the dresses that they stock at other vendors. It would be hard, however, to find customer service as poor as what you will find at this shop.

Brautpunkt Weisbaden has some of the worst customer service I have ever encountered. The unpleasantness began from my first appointment, where I was rudely greeted by a haughty shopkeeper who seemed immediately annoyed by my presence. Despite this uncomfortable experience, I fell in love with one of their dresses, prompting me to take the plunge and fork over thousands of dollars.

Almost immediately, more red flags sprang up in my dealings with this shop. When I would send emails inquiring into the status of my dress or asking any sort of follow up question, I would regularly go ignored for up to two weeks at a time.

Several months later, it was finally time to pick up my dress. I flew out to Wiesbaden, (I live outside of Germany) although they waited to confirm my pickup appointment time until a couple of days prior. For someone who was traveling thousands of miles to retrieve their dress, you can understand why this sort of regular radio silence on their part was aggravating.

Immediately upon putting my dress on (which was several sizes too big), a glaring deformation in the bodice of the dress was visible. The shopkeeper helping me that day had to call in the manager to take a look. After wrangling my dress around for a couple of minutes, she managed to pop something into place, seemingly fixing a wire that had been jutting out.

This significant and very noticeable issue in the dress should have been addressed long before I arrived, as my dress had been in the care of Brautpunkt for a month at this point. At any rate, I left with my dress that day, hopeful that a skilled seamstress could mend the remaining issues and that the bodice had been, albeit amateurly, fixed.

Days later when I tried my dress on, I was dismayed to see that the wire was again popped out of shape. At this stage, my wedding date was five weeks away, and I was outside of Germany. I promptly contacted Brautpunk, asking for suggestions on what to do. Instead of taking responsibility and offering any sort of refund or coverage for additional alterations, they suggested that I order a whole new dress from the designer, clearly kicking the cost of the mistake down the line. This solution was not a real solution- I was thousands of miles away from their shop with the countdown to my wedding day nearing the end. Still, they refused to take accountability for the mistake and their failure to properly inspect the quality of their products prior to a pickup appointment. If they had done that in the first place and noticed the issue when they received the dress, there might have been time for a whole new one to be produced before my wedding. Because of their negligence however, this was not an option.

My wedding day has since passed, and my dress wound up looking beautiful. This turn of events was thanks entirely to the skilled work of a local seamstress who ended up outfitting me with a new bodice, the cost of which Brautpunkt refused to assist with. To say I am disappointed with the quality of the product I purchased from this shop and their overwhelming lack of customer service would be the ultimate understatement. I never thought it would be possible to spend so much money on such an important garment and have it arrive in less than perfect condition, but to have the vendor I purchased it from throw their hands up and say "it's your problem" was unbelievable to me.

You can find amazing dresses in other places, don't spend your money at a shop with such little regard for their customers and the quality of their products.