i was hoping i wouldnt have to write one of these...VENDOR RANT!

Being from Staten Island and having girls in three different states i wanted to go to a bridal store for BM dresses that had a good reputation and also was easy to get to.

I went to a couple places on staten island but didnt have great experiences so I decided to go into Brooklyn to Valentina's

In the beginning they were great . i picked beautiful watters and watters dresses in red...my girls loved them


untill they came in.........they were the wrong color...
I wanted a red ...a nice red ....they came in watermelon, they look pink ..everyone i ask says they look pink as well..
I had my MOH's in the same dress with a different color sash which should have been champagne, but nope they are ivory ( which looks terrible next to my diamond white dress)

When i asked them what I could do to change the dresses, they told me nothing...I would have to pay for all new dresses!!

When i wanted to order my MOH's new sashes to match the other girls ...they wanted to charge me 60 a sash!! insane

and then ..this was the icing on the cake...my FMIL was nice enough to pick up dresses for some of the girls ...so she went last sunday ..she sat in front of the store for and hour and a half and they never opened...Now on their voicemail they say they are open 11-4 on Sundays
Well when i called them on Tuesday they said they arent opened on Sundays during the summer...would have been nice for someone to tell me that ..or even a sign on the door...the girl told me i should have called to verify! i was there so many sundays why would I call???? i told them I was coming next weekend the week before and they never said a word.

Some people may think I am over reacting but when you have a picture in your head of what your dresses will look like and they are totally different its upsetting ....especially when you bought everything to go with your wedding to match those dresses...

Ladies dont go to Valentina's ...they are unprofessional and do not deserve to have people spending money in their store ...I had 10 girls and two flower girls buy their dresses there ..you think they would have accomodated me in some way!

I have to agree I had a very bad experience with them for my sisters wedding. So for mine I decided to go to Kelly's Kreations....OMG I think I am getting an ulcer for the store!

My mothers dress that was ordered in Feb has not come in yet! I can't believe that these places are so rude, and the customer service sux!

Sorry you had to go through this!

omg I am so sorry that that happened to you and I cant believe that they wont do anything for you- thats awful!

Oh i forgot to add why my FMIL had to go there...the week before i was picking up the rest of the girls dresses and was paying with checks ...like i did all the other times

well they told me i had to come back after the checks were cleared to pick up the dresses!!

but i picked up all the other ones with checks ..they of course told me i didnt..

Why would I lie??

so rediculous

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Posted by kimnsteve

Being from Staten Island and having girls in three different states i wanted to go to a bridal store for BM dresses that had a good reputation and also was easy to get to.

I went to a couple places on staten island but didnt have great experiences so I decided to go into Brooklyn to Valentina's

In the beginning they were great . i picked beautiful watters and watters dresses in red...my girls loved them


untill they came in.........they were the wrong color...
I wanted a red ...a nice red ....they came in watermelon, they look pink ..everyone i ask says they look pink as well..
I had my MOH's in the same dress with a different color sash which should have been champagne, but nope they are ivory ( which looks terrible next to my diamond white dress)

When i asked them what I could do to change the dresses, they told me nothing...I would have to pay for all new dresses!!

When i wanted to order my MOH's new sashes to match the other girls ...they wanted to charge me 60 a sash!! insane

and then ..this was the icing on the cake...my FMIL was nice enough to pick up dresses for some of the girls ...so she went last sunday ..she sat in front of the store for and hour and a half and they never opened...Now on their voicemail they say they are open 11-4 on Sundays
Well when i called them on Tuesday they said they arent opened on Sundays during the summer...would have been nice for someone to tell me that ..or even a sign on the door...the girl told me i should have called to verify! i was there so many sundays why would I call???? i told them I was coming next weekend the week before and they never said a word.

Some people may think I am over reacting but when you have a picture in your head of what your dresses will look like and they are totally different its upsetting ....especially when you bought everything to go with your wedding to match those dresses...

Ladies dont go to Valentina's ...they are unprofessional and do not deserve to have people spending money in their store ...I had 10 girls and two flower girls buy their dresses there ..you think they would have accomodated me in some way!

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i'm sorry to hear you had this bad experience... i can understand how disappointed you must be -- i also planned my entire color scheme around my BM dresses (although i have a little more flexibility since they look different in every possible lighting)

did the dress come in the wrong color or it just looks different from what you expected? maybe they just have bad lighting and it will look more red when you are somewhere else. your photographer could touch them up and make them look more red in your pro pictures. is it possible to have them dyed? that's another alternative.

as for the sashes, $60 each is insane. a private seamstress (or even a sewing-machine-savvy friend, family member or LIWer) could make one pretty easily, especially if you want a more common color like ivory (as opposed to making it the exact shade of the dresses)

good luck with everything -- hopefully this will be your big mishap and the rest will go smoothly

That is horrible =(
I say blast them on every wedding website you can find, and let THEM know that you're going to do that.
What a shame. I'm sorry

I am going to look for fabrics this weekend to see if I can find something I like ...

I would love to dye them but I am so afraid they will get ruined and then I wont have anything ..


thanks for the suggestions ladies!


I didnt know the photog can do that!! im gonna tell him when i meet with him!!!

Did you not see a swatch of the color before you ordered them? Or it didn't match the swatch?

Cause I know alot of dresses, the colors look different in pictures so you need to see the swatch before you order.

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Posted by kslmbuggie

this is a terrible situation that u had to go through, but question....when u ordered the dresses didnt you pick the color from the swatches that they had in the store?

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That's what I was thinking. They didn't have a watters dress in the color you wanted?

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Posted by Mici n KC

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Posted by kslmbuggie

this is a terrible situation that u had to go through, but question....when u ordered the dresses didnt you pick the color from the swatches that they had in the store?

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That's what I was thinking. They didn't have a watters dress in the color you wanted?

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It's possible they didn't. Bill Levkoff does all of their samples of dress style X in color Y -- so the sample of 555 is always black. they dont make any samples in indigo.... so no bridal shop had one. I ended up ordering a yard of fabric because the 1' swatch was too hard to visualize, and the color was impt to me.

I do think that the bridal shop should have warned that the color runs more pinky than dark red, if they knew thats what she was going for.

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Posted by bluegreen08

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Posted by Mici n KC

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Posted by kslmbuggie

this is a terrible situation that u had to go through, but question....when u ordered the dresses didnt you pick the color from the swatches that they had in the store?

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That's what I was thinking. They didn't have a watters dress in the color you wanted?

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It's possible they didn't. Bill Levkoff does all of their samples of dress style X in color Y -- so the sample of 555 is always black. they dont make any samples in indigo.... so no bridal shop had one. I ended up ordering a yard of fabric because the 1' swatch was too hard to visualize, and the color was impt to me.

I do think that the bridal shop should have warned that the color runs more pinky than dark red, if they knew thats what she was going for.

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Right, but bridal shops all have swatch books for that reason, so you can see the color as it actually looks on fabric, not just in the picture. That's what I'm wondering with this if it's that the color she got didn't match the swatch, or if she didn't check out a swatch first and just relied on the picture....

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Posted by bluegreen08

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Posted by Mici n KC

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Posted by kslmbuggie

this is a terrible situation that u had to go through, but question....when u ordered the dresses didnt you pick the color from the swatches that they had in the store?

---

That's what I was thinking. They didn't have a watters dress in the color you wanted?

---

It's possible they didn't. Bill Levkoff does all of their samples of dress style X in color Y -- so the sample of 555 is always black. they dont make any samples in indigo.... so no bridal shop had one. I ended up ordering a yard of fabric because the 1' swatch was too hard to visualize, and the color was impt to me.

I do think that the bridal shop should have warned that the color runs more pinky than dark red, if they knew thats what she was going for.

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they may not have a sample in the color u want, but they always have a swatch book, which is why it is nearly impossible to get a color totally different from what is in the swatch book.