Chloe Robertson was annoyed when she and her mother travelled hours for an appointment at a Brisbane bridal shop, only to find a “closed” sign as her only greeting.
“We drove all that way, we’d paid for accommodation there,” she recalled to news.com.au.
Ms Robertson, 29, was hoping to get fitted for her wedding dress – for which she had already paid a hefty $2360 deposit. Meanwhile, her mother wanted to give the dressmaker her measurements so she could get the production of her own custom-made gown underway before her daughter’s wedding day in September.
They had driven from Condamine and Toowoomba, a five-hour drive and a one and a half-hour drive respectively, to attend the appointment at the Brisbane store, called Stunning Wedding Dress.
Frustrated upon seeing the closed sign, Ms Robertson sent a text message to the business owner, Oleksandra ‘Sasha’ Manteit, while they waited out the front.
Within minutes, the bridal shop boss texted her that she was away on holidays and that she had cancelled the appointment. Though, looking back through their email exchanges, Ms Robertson could find no messages to that effect.
She soon learned something far more upsetting; Stunning Wedding Dress was in the process of shutting down permanently.
Just a week later, news.com.au reported that the store had been “gutted”, with everything cleaned out including dresses, as the company had collapsed.
It comes as last month, two other bridal shops collapsed just days apart, with one of them plunging nearly 100 weddings into jeopardy.
Ms Robertson is among an unknown number of brides who have been left “freaking out” as the store’s sudden closure means they are unsure if they will have a dress in time for their wedding days.
Brisbane-based Stunning Wedding Dress was operated under a sole trader registration by Ms Manteit who did not respond to requests for comment, including on the status of clients’ dresses.
Some customers, but not all, were informed of the shop’s decision to shut down “circumstances beyond our control”.
But for Ms Robertson and at least one other bride-to-be, they had no idea until news.com.au’s article last week.
“I’m only 10 weeks away from my wedding, I’m stressing out that I won’t have a dress,” Ms Robertson said.
However, after contacting Stunning Wedding Dress, the company has told her it will provide her with her dress as promised.
She got engaged at the end of last year and first approached Stunning Wedding Dress in February to start the process of customising her gown.
But in the past few months, she started to grow frustrated as she noticed the company’s communication with her was “pretty slack”.
Several weeks ago they told her the dress was not ready, but now she has been informed it is ready.
“The timelines don’t match up,” she said.
Do you know more? Get in touch | alex.turner-cohen@news.com.au
Then there’s Monica Carr, who has already forked out $3300 for her $4125 dress but is now worried she will be receiving nothing.
“I did have a total meltdown the night I found out,” she told news.com.au.
Ms Carr, 38, is getting married in late September, just like Ms Robertson.
“We paid that 80 per cent deposit on May 29,” she said. “Then we didn’t hear anything.”
Unfortunately, just a week before the company’s collapse, she was informed her designs had been sent to the tailor.
This has caused her to worry that her dress “hasn’t even been started”.
The bride-to-be decided to go with Stunning Wedding Dress because of its attractive offer of a six-week turnaround – which she said has “clearly backfired” on her.
“It’s pretty heartbreaking,” she added.
At the end of June, The Bridal Atelier collapsed into liquidation, leading to its Sydney and Melbourne stores shutting down.
It’s understood 99 weddings have been impacted by the company’s closure, leaving some brides out of pocket thousands of dollars.
Emma*, for instance, paid $5600, but this money was never passed onto the design company, meaning she paid all that money for nothing.
The designer has agreed to provide her with the gown for $3000, which is the absolute minimum they can do it for in order for them to break even. Emma has started a GoFundMe to crowd fund the final price of her dress.
“I don’t always wear dresses, I’m quite fussy. This was the only dress that I fell in love with,” she previously told news.com.au.
Just two days later Adelaide boutique Bridal Fusion by Mascia also closed permanently with its owner filing for bankruptcy.
The owner, the eponymous Mascia Paradiso, told news.com.au at the time she just “couldn’t hang on” anymore.
“Due to the fact of Covid and a marriage breakdown as well as storms and a lot of outside issues, and also personal stress and problems, I decided to declare bankruptcy,” Ms Paradiso, 50, told news.com.au.
“Last November I got hit by a storm, (the store) got flooded, I couldn’t open for weeks on end, right before Christmas. I lost thousands and thousands of dollars,” she explained.
And earlier this year, another wedding business, Eden and Bell, which sold floral arrangements to brides and grooms, also collapsed. The Sydney based business owed $530,000 to 85 creditors, including to a bride and groom owed $2500.
The sad news about Stunning Wedding Dress came just hours after news.com.au lifted the lid on the entire wedding industry which is suffering immensely amid the cost of living crisis.
Helen Manuell, owner of the eponymous Helen Manuell Bridal Couture, said that demand for her intricate handmade wedding dresses had dried up so drastically that she is learning a new profession after 25 years in the industry.
“It was pretty obvious, as soon as the RBA starts mucking around with the interest rates, the first thing that’s going to go is the luxury end,” Ms Manuell told news.com.au.
“Wedding dresses are a luxury. Couture — hand made wedding dresses like the ones I make — are beyond a luxury.”
alex.turner-cohen@news.com.au