Summary
Alteration is a labor-intensive business. [Kirkpatrick] would go to the bridal shop, fit the brides, pin them, and take the dresses back to her studio to sew. "We would have over a thousand dresses come through the shop a year," she recalls. "I would have six weddings a weekend each with a wedding gown and three or four bridesmaids." by 1995, she had three employees to keep up with the work. "A simple hemline could take an hour or hour and a half," she says. "Fittings alone, almost four hours."
Kirkpatrick's most memorable dress, though, may be the one a bride and her sister brought in for cleaning and preservation, a service Shaline Bridal also offers. "It was raining the day of her wedding, and [the dress] was covered in mud," she remembers. What's more,"the bride wore this dress on her wedding night. "She loved her dress so much that she kept it on," Kirkpatrick says. "I think that's awesome.""I have a customer, a three-time bride, who has had me make her three different gowns," explains Kirkpatrick. "I said, 'Maybe you should go get a different dressmaker.' She said, 'Are you kidding? As soon as I get engaged, I know where I'm going.'"See the full content of this document
Extract
A Cinderella Story
On most mornings, tiny handprints smudge the display window and front door of Shaline Bridal. Little girls, says owner Shajine Kirkpatrick, are fascinated by bridal gowns - the daily deposit of fingerprints, is proof, and she's happy to see them at her Montpelier shop.
"There are people [with] the whole Cinderella attitude, who want the dress of their dreams...See the full content of this document
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