R & M Designs

I think they do fantastic alterations, however I have had awful experiences every time I’ve been in. Out of three scheduled appointments I had over the last month, my contact forgot about 2 of them. We called from the store and she told me to dig around until I found my dress. Seriously. They do great work, I wish they had better customer service. It’s not worth it, in my opinion.

I took my wedding dress here for alterations and was very disappointed with the service. To be fair, the end result was wonderful. My dress looked amazing and I got so many compliments on it the whole night. However, getting to this point was incredibly difficult. I live out of town and had two appointments scheduled for alterations before the wedding week (which they told us would be ok). The first appointment, we worked with Marilyn, who promised that all the changes would be made by the second and final alterations appointment. We show up for the second appointment a few weeks later, and she had forgotten to make all the requested changes except for hemming the dress. This was incredibly frustrating because I was going to get in town three days before the wedding, when we were already booked up with hair and makeup trials and other appointments. And after discussing the changes at our first meeting, we had asked Marilyn if she needed to write all our alteration requests down, and she said she would remember them. To make matters worse, she never even apologized for forgetting. But we couldn’t do anything, so we scheduled two more appointments for the busy week of the wedding. We get there the Wednesday before the wedding, and the dress didn’t fit and other parts of the alterations weren’t done the way we had requested them (we had talked about a belt and sleeves being done a certain way, and Marilyn had had a great idea how to do them. However, she apparently forgot and did them completely differently than the three of us had discussed. And then acted annoyed that she would need to fix it). We also told her the chest would need to be taken out a little as it wasn’t covering enough, and she was extremely annoyed and said «Well, that is going to take me a really long time.» We get there the next morning and there are still more things she needs to fix, and she tells us we need to come back in later that morning. We told her we had other appointments that morning as it was two days before the wedding, and she said, again very annoyed, «Well I have other appointments too.» We came back in twice that same day for the other fittings, and she said «Well if you hadn’t had another appointment, I could have gotten this done a lot sooner.» Even though it was her fault she had forgotten in the first place and we had told her originally I had other appointments two days before my wedding! To sum it up, we were in there four times within 24 hours and she was consistently very rude. Even my mom, who is nice to everyone, was extremely shocked at her rudeness and lack of customer service. The icing on the cake was that I got a call the morning of my wedding (which they knew it was) requesting payment. They wanted to charge $ 900 for everything, including labor, but the fact that Marilyn didn’t write anything down was the reason there was so much labor and she had to redo things so often. Luckily, after talking with a different person and explaining the situation, we were able to get a more reasonable price. Marilyn does do great work and the dress looked wonderful — she was just very rude to us and made me feel like I was a huge bother for wanting my wedding dress to look how we had originally discussed. My advice would be either to work with Connie, who is very personable and doesn’t act like you are a pain in the neck when explaining how you want your wedding dress to look. If you do work with Marilyn, who is, like I said, very talented, be very clear in explaining what you want and make sure she writes down your exact words before you leave the shop. Apparently I wasn’t the first person who this has happened to.

They do great work here and everyone is very kind. I had my wedding dress bustled, a lace bridal jacket altered and mended, and had the dress steamed. The total was $ 165. I would recommend to a friend.

SO Connie was great in the beginning, although long story short — I am less than a month away fro my wedding and I have a wedding dress I cannot wear because Connie does not want to fix her mistake. Actually, Connie REFUSES to fix what she did to my dress.
She recommended what seemed like a simple alteration to improve the appearance of my dress. I agreed, I mean what do I know about alterations, and I trusted her to make good decisions. When I went back to pick it up, the entire fit was completely changed. I was in tears, she sent me out the door telling me to loose weight basically! (I wear a size 4 — I don’t think my size is the issue?!).
I have tried to make appointments to come back in and have her look at my dress to fix the problem that THEY MADE. She told me to find someone else! Also, this old woman has the balls to call the bridal salon I got my dress from and let them know I was unhappy — I’m assuming so she can cover her own ass.
This is the worst experience of my life. I do not know what I am going to do. Connie has single-​handedly ruined my wedding.
I came to R&M because they are so great and the «best of the best» and I received the absolute worst service.
They take on too many clients, can’t remember what was discussed in previous appointments, and worst of all is a flat out bitch.
This store should not be in business. They will ruin your dress and then you will be in a very bad position — I think there are better — and more reasonable — dress places to find.

I have gotten a lot of my dresses altered at R and M! They do an amazing job and I have never been disappointed. It is so hard finding a place for alterations that you truly love! Connie and her team (Marylyn and others) do a terrific job! I will for sure be brining my wedding dress here!

i had a great experience when i took my wedding gown for alterations. i had purchased my gown out of town, so i needed to find a local shoppe to provide the alterations. prior to buying my gown, i had looked at gowns in a clayton store who recommend r&m designs to their customers for alterations.
connie was so wonderful, really talented and possesses a delightful personality! since i was getting married out of town and none of my bridesmaids were local, she designed a creative bustle consisting of matching numbered tags so it would be easy to do without having seen it done before. and, it seemed especially challenging to create the bustle parts for my dress since the skirt has many layers. this shoppe is professional in every way, and as a bride i felt completely comfortable handing over my beloved wedding gown and couldn’t have been happier with the results.

I had a similar experience with the surprise price tag at the end. My friend raved about her experience here with her wedding gown, so I took my bridesmaid dress to Connie for alterations.
Unfortunately my dress needed a little letting out (shame on me for not getting bigger size at David’s Bridal) and that is apparently «more work», which I get. Connie did point out the deb gowns hanging in store, to show that top paying clients shop there, which should have prompted me to ask for an estimate. But I did not. If price matters to you, ask.
I was shocked when I went to pick up dress and it was $ 85. That may be reasonable, but it was not my experiences at other places. She was not happy with my complaint but she should give people estimates. Her work was good though.

I went here based on a recommendation from a co-​worker. Apparently, this place is one of the best in St. Louis for bridal alterations. I took in two dresses, one of which was a long bridesmaids dress. I was desperate to find somebody who could do some alterations within the time frame I specified. Connie said she would certainly be able to do that, whereas other cleaners and alterations places said they had no time, or were never open after I got off of work. In fact, one place I went to that is located right down the street from me in Clayton specifically states on their door that they do alterations, but when I went inside they said they only work on alterations at the end of the day when they no longer have any clothes to dry clean.
I guess I had no idea what to expect in terms of pricing, but I had hoped it wouldn’t be more than $ 50 or so dollars to trim a dress and take it in a bit.
Unfortunately, when I got there Connie didn’t really give me any details on the pricing, and I was caught up in getting things altered so I didn’t ask. So, yes, it is my fault I never got a quote. I ended up paying over $ 100 for my dress to be altered. Let me say that they were tricky about the pricing.
At first I believed that it would only be $ 100, because that’s what I was told when I came in for a second fitting. However, because she was waiting on me to bring the proper shoes, she charged me an extra $ 25 or so to trim it. Pretty sure I was never told there would be an extra charge if I didn’t have the correct shoes the first time around. Had I known, I would have just waited to do everything at once.
Also, on my last fitting I realized when I got home that the length was uneven. I took a good look in the mirror with it on, and also showed a friend, and we both agreed that one side was an inch or so higher than the other. Well, I can’t go back to get that fixed when the wedding I’m going to is less than a week away.
Alas, I was happy though that more or less the dress looks as good as it can. Especially because Connie was altering something that was probably at least 2 dress sizes too big. I am unhappy about the length issue, as I did just spend over $ 100 to get this dress fitted.
Fortunately, if you are trying to get something done in a time crunch Connie usually has time to fit you in and will work way beyond the normal working hours of 8 – 5. She has mentioned that she sometimes will have fittings that go until 9 p.m.
As far as I know, my coworker was very thrilled about her dress and couldn’t have been happier with the alterations. So I guess our experiences were not quite the same.