Wedding Central Forum

hi everyone

I really want to order a sophia tolli wedding dress from house of brides. I have tried on the dress and love it but its going to cost me $2500 to buy it in australia or $1100 online at house of brides.

has anyone bought their actual wedding dress from HOB and if you paid over $1000 how much was the customs tax...

I really do love this dress and i dont want to pay $1500 more just because I live in Australia! also does anyone have any tips for ordering smoothly etc

Michelle

Have you confirmed that they will ship Sophia Tolli bridal gowns to Aus? I'm just asking as they won't with many other brands- Maggie Sottero, Alfred Angelo etc. They will with BM gowns but not bridal.

If they don't you could contact bridalgown.net and see if they can get it for you.

Just a note on House of Brides...

I ordered my bridesmaids dresses from HOB - I originally ordered one last year to make sure the style suited my BM's, and then another 2 in April (April 2nd).

I have never been able to use the tracking number they gave me, so after many emails back and forth, I just emailed them directly for status updates with little or no response. I was really nervous about the time frame - my wedding is in August, so I put down that my wedding was in July and paid for rush order delivery to ensure they would be here. They advised it would be 6-8 weeks, heaps of time to get alterations etc.

Anyway, here we are a week from my fake wedding date and they have no idea where the dresses are, and no idea if they will arrive before the actual wedding date. Am struggling to get any info out of them at all -very frustrating!

If you are ordering from HOB, do it early, and make sure you follow them up to keep track of it!

Oh no - you poor thing. That is not good at all.

So, basically you ordered the dresses 3 months ago & they have no idea where the dresses are?

Did they say whether the dresses had even left the manufacturer yet?? What designer did you order?

That is really unfair and my biggest concern about ordering online.

I REALLY hope they find your dresses and really soon.

Let us know how you go. I have dresses that are due in any day....no word yet and now I am NERVOUS as anything!

p.s not sure if this is the same for you...but this is what I have been advised.

My dresses should be delivered to HOB in 7-9 weeks. I also ordered rush order. But the designer also have a 2 week additional window in case of delays. It says on the website: Designers apply a 2 week window in addition to these shipping time frames. Designers reserve the right to adjust their shipping times depending on their production.

So....it could take as long as the 9 weeks plus extra 2 weeks to arrive = 11 weeks....not the minimum of 7.

If your estimate was 6 - 8 weeks plus your designer also has the extra 2 weeks in there too...it could make it as long as 10 weeks. That would mean its only a couple of weeks late....which is obviously not acceptable....but might mean that is very close to being delivered to HOB?

OH and one other thing...those estimates are from when you receive the confirmation email....NOT from when you order.....my confirmation email took 2 weeks after I actually ordered the dresses...so they start the timings from that date....when did you get the confirmation email???

Well....I have just received my shipping email confirmation.

After paying extra for "rush shipping" I have just been informed MY DRESSES HAVE BEEN POSTED TO SIDNEY, CANADA, not Sydney Australia!!!

Freaking awesome! I am beyond stressed at this point. How they could get that wrong is beyond me!!!!

Watch this space for further updates!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

NOT happy HOUSE OF BRIDES!

Hi everyone,

In case anyone is reading this and would like an update on HOB before they order..here is my experience.

I ordered my 3 x after six bridesmaid dresses on Friday May 4th. I ordered over the phone.

I recieved a confirmation email about 2 weeks later confirming the order. By the way, they take the offical order date from when you recieve the order confirmation email..not when you first order the dresses. Keep this in mind as it does add an additional few weeks to delivery time.

I paid extra for rush production and an additional for rush shipping. My confirmation email said that the dresses would be shipped to me in mid july....and that it would take between 3-5 business days to get to me.

They were true to their word...and on 17th July 2012, I recieved a confirmation email saying they had been shipped! BUT unfortunately it stated it was shipped to Sidney Canada, not Sydney Australia. The lady who took the order wrote Sideny, Australia on the order form - but somwhere there was a misscomunication. As soon as I saw this I emailed and phoned several people at HOB, frantically explaining I live in Sydney Australia, and luckily HOB were immediately onto it.

Long story short - they were able to contact USPS in time before the package boarded a plane to Canada and it never ended up going there.

So, after that I followed the tracking several times a day. The tracking number they give you does work on the USPS website and they update it regualrly. Then, once it arrives in Australia the tracking will work on the aus post website, I again tracked it daily.

The dresses arrived today - only 5 business days later so the timing was spot on. The dresses were wrapped in plastic, they were not crushed and they are stunning! They are without doubt geuine after six dessy dresses - they are all the exact same black dye, and all the correct sizes! They took exactly 10 weeks to arrive.

I would definitly recommend buying from them. If I had bought the dresses from Sydney it would have cost $340 per dress. I got the dresses for $168 each....and with extra rush production and rush shipping it came too $190 per dress.

It was inconvienent that the spellng of Sydney was incorrectly made and therefore it could have been shipped to Canada - and believe me I was stressed - BUT HOB were very quick to recitfy the situation. I cannot fault them for fixing it up very quickly! So I could not be happier and would definitly order from the again. I think I just lucked out with incorrect spelling and I doubt that would happen to often!

I have attached some dodgy iphone photos!!! They look stunning in real life.

I have just ordered my wedding dress and my engagement dress from house of brides.
I am having a surprise wedding it's an engagement party but surprise it's a wedding. So I bit the bullet and orders my dresses from HOB. I'm excited but nervous.
The wedding dress I wanted in Adelaide was $1950 and the engagement dress was $400. I got both for under $950AUD.

Now I have to anxiously wait.

Be Careful!
My daughter ordered 2 bridesmaids dresses from them....paid and extra $30 for rush orders. One was supposed to be here 1st Sept the other 1st Oct. After many calls and emails (that they would not respond to or call back) just 5 1/2 weeks out from the wedding she finally manages to get to speak to someone who kindly advised her that they were no longer dealing with the Dessy Group and they would refund her money, and that she would need to contact the Dessy Group direct to get the dresses released to her. The Dessy Group told her she would have to contact their authorised retailer in Perth and have the dresses shipped to them. This was done and she had to paid for the dresses again at triple the price she paid HOB! They finally arrived yesterday.....BUT she is STILL waiting for her refund from HOB and no one will return her calls or reply to her emails!

I bought from bestbridalprices (not house of brides)
The pricing was just about the same between the two of them but i went with bestbridalprices because the online customer service was much better with bestbridalprices. House of brides uses someone for their online service that quite clearly can't speak english well.

I got 4x bari jay bridesmaids dresses for about half what i would have paid here, no issues with shipping etc which happened about 1 week faster than they estimated.

Well I am still waiting for my dresses but everytime I have contacted House of Brides they have got back to me.
Yes a little delay but thats due to the time difference.

I haven't had any issues so far my fingers are crossed as they have said that my dresses are due to them at the beginning of Dec so not long now.
I have been emailing them every few weeks checking that things are still on schedule and they have said they are.
I got a refund because I paid for shipping but then shipping turned out to be free and I got that back quite quickly so so far no complaints I am just anxiously waiting for my dresses.

I was very happy to stumble across this topic as I am in love with a particular Mori Lee gown & have found it on HOB for $800 less than in a store I visited today. I have the same concerns as most about ordering something so important online, but I'm finding it hard to justify spending the extra $$ on exactly the same dress but I'm not sure I can live with the stress for 14+ weeks not knowing whether the gown is actually going to turn up, what condition it will be & whether it's authentic or not

I'd order through bridalgown.net

First time poster but just wanted to let everyone know about my experience with HOB, I was a bit worried due to some of the bad reviews.

I ordered a bel aire mantilla veil for half the price compared to Australia.

I didn't get a confirmation email, however it did show the status of my order if I logged on to the website.
I had sent 2 unanswered emails to them trying to confirm my order, after which at the 8 week mark I used the live chat on the website where they were able to confirm they were expecting my order any day.

A few days later I got a confirmation of shipping email, the tracking number worked on the USPS site (did not work for aus post) and my veil arrived about a week later (so about 9 weeks in total after ordering online).