Cameo & Cufflinks (by appointment only)

I will preface this by saying at the end of the day, I was very happy with how my wedding dress turned out. Shopping experience was a 5/5 but the alterations was about a 2/5. The dress selection and process of shopping was a blast and I really enjoyed trying on the selection of dresses. I went to about 7 stores and ended up going back to Cameo and Cufflinks twice to try on the dress I ended up choosing. The staff always seemed nice and welcoming and the dress came in faster than planned. They were respectful of my budget and pulled numerous options for me to try. However, the alterations process was significantly less smooth. While I acknowledge wedding dresses are challenging to alter, I felt that my alterations would be relatively straight forward and only needed a hem, a liner put in the front (which came with the dress and already fit me), and the shoulders tightened. They strongly recommended their in house seamstress and it seemed like she had positive reviews, so I did not question it. Despite having my dress months in advance, they would not let me book alterations until less than 6 weeks before my wedding to ensure a good fit, I am told this is standard, which was fine. I had my first two appointments and while they went okay, the company I brought and I felt the seamstress was quite abrasive and rude and did not listen to my vision or what I wanted done to the dress. She added a half liner but did not remove the cups as requested and did not attach it to the dress initially so it was falling out and showing in places that it should not have been. At one point the seamstress and store owner were almost arguing about how to approach different aspects of the alterations which made me lose confidence in the seamstress too. When she removed the cups, I warned her that the shoulders would need to be made tighter as I was losing a significant amount of breast push up. However, the shoulders still ended up too large and then when adjusting them, she made the actual arm hole smaller, so small that it was cutting into my entire back and arm leaving immediate red-purple discolouration. While she told me this is the only way to alter the shoulders, in chatting with other individuals after the fact, there are other ways to approach these alterations. Additionally, she was on vacation for 2 weeks prior to my wedding which was not disclosed to me, so what would have been the final appointment where I was left with cuts and bruises, was just over a week before my out of town wedding. Unrelated to the arm and shoulder issues, the dress was still covered in little strings and there was a tear in the side of the dress where she had hemmed it. They initially told me the next appointment would not be until a week later (the day I left Calgary for my wedding) as the seamstress only works part time, which was also not clear initially. After some fighting, they let me come back the next day and to their credit, had finished it and I was able to take it home. My bustle broke immediately, it did not even make it to the reception or get used for any length of time. Other individuals bustled the dress as they were shown by the seamstress and in just walking around with the weight of the dress, 2/5 loops just broke, no one stepped on it and it did not get caught on anything. By about an hour into the night, all of the bustle loops were gone and I had about 30 safety pins in my dress along with extra sewing that guests had attempted to fix throughout the night. While I did love my dress and would recommend cameo and cufflinks, I would suggest looking into alterations options further.