a truly wonderful experience?
By far, I think the worst experience I had was at Trudy’s Brides whose tag line on their website is “a Truly Wonderful Experience Awaits You”. I guess if you are in to the ostentatious and pretentious then perhaps Trudy’s would be a wonderful experience. Now to be fair, I was very suspect of the very “Wonderful Experience” that Trudy’s touts. I went in prepared for the most cunning of sales ladies trying to extract the most money out of me as quickly as possible. I am sure the naive gaggle of tittering 20-somethings in the dress veiwing area next to me were quite happy basking in the obsequious attention being showered on them by the “bridal consultant”, at least for the 90 minutes they were allotted, before they were unceremoniously cut off and shoved out the door. Trudy’s is the bridal shop that the books warn you about.
I went to the dressing room, where the consultant asked me what I was looking for before she went to find the perfect dress. Of course, all of the “perfect dresses” were again in the high end or TOTALLY out of the range that I had given her. They also did not necessarily reflect what I had told her I was interested in. In my cynicism, I believe they were more what she was interested in selling me, rather than what I wanted. All of the tags were Trudy’s tags not the designer’s tags, standard practice I assure you. If I asked the sales lady who the designer was, she would tell me, but she certainly did not volunteer that information, nor would she write it down for me. And when my best friend attempted to talk to the consultant as she was coming out of my dressing room, to suggest a certain dress that she saw, the consultant curtly informed her that she should just “go sit down” in the viewing area and brushed by her. Now I understand that the bride is the main target and the one with the money, but perhaps sales clerks should try to understand the basics of protocol amongst women. Best friends may be even more influential in this decision than mothers. Win the best friend and you have won the business. You would think that seeing as the sales clerk was a woman and I only had ONE friend with me, that she would understand this dynamic. Obviously NOT.
We left Trudy’s completely disgusted, never to return.
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