Several months ago one of the local news stations here in Nashville ran a story about a bride-to-be who couldn’t return her wedding dress when her fiance died before their wedding day. (I think this was back around the time my mom got diagnosed with a month to live and went into the hospice. Which is why I didn’t write about it sooner. I’m just now working my way down the list of ideas I had back then.)
I don’t remember exactly how her fiance died. (I want to say car accident, but that might not be right.) How he died isn’t important really. The fact of the matter was he died, the bride-to-be was devastated, and at some point in her grieving process she realized he wasn’t coming back, there’d never be a wedding, so there was no sense holding on to the dress she’d bought.
She took it back to the bridal shop, expecting them to be sympathetic and return it no problem. They were sympathetic, but they refused to take the dress back or refund her money.
Irate, the woman contacted the On Your Side guy at the local news station to investigate. He talked to the shop and found out the reason they wouldn’t take back the dress was because it had been altered. They weren’t willing to take a loss because they didn’t believe they could resell it.
He sought out five other bridal shops to see what they would do had this bride-to-be bought her dress in their stores. Two said they’d refund, two said they’d offer to try and sell it for her, and the last one wouldn’t give a refund.
The size of the store seemed to be one factor in what they’d do in this situation. The larger stores seemed to have more volume and felt sure they could resell the dress to another customer eventually. The smaller stores were operating on a tighter margin and therefore had to strictly enforce their “No Returns/All Sales Are Final” policy.
If you’re planning on purchasing a wedding dress any time soon, it might not be a bad idea to clarify the store’s return policy. Heaven forbid anything should happen to jeopardize your wedding plans once you have bought the dress, but you never know what Fate has in store. Better to make sure you can return the dress if need be rather than heap frustration on top of heartache.
Courtney Mroch writes about animals great and small in Pets and the harmony and strife that encompasses married life in Marriage. For a full listing of her articles click here.
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