Is anyone else on here from London, Ontario and order your dress from Nicholas & Elizabeth Bridal? Or considering it? I've been through hell and back over the last day and a half trying to deal with their chaos right now, so if anyone has any questions, I'm probably your girl.
I ordered my Mikaella dress from them in July 2019 - 8 months ago; it was due to arrive in-store this month. Yesterday, a kind, beautiful, thoughtful soul in the WW community sent me a message that she remembered I'd bought my dress from there and that she'd seen a news article that Nicholas & Elizabeth had closed suddenly. I looked into it and, sure enough, their landlord had locked them out of the building after they hadn't paid $15k in rent, although they had initially claimed the closure was due to a flood. So of course I panicked as eviction and bankruptcy scenarios played through my mind.
I contacted the manager who told me that she was in communication with the landlord and that she'd be in touch about my dress in addition to my mom's, which is currently in the store, paid for and on hold, but inaccessible to me. My FMIL also ordered her dress from the same store. From I gather from all the Facebook posts, they were placing orders but somehow couldn't pay for them so dresses were showing up late, if at all.
So. Today I sent emails, facebook messages, instagram messages, and called our 2 designers to try to find out where our respective dresses are and what can be done. Thankfully FMIL's dress was an easy fix - she just has to call her credit card people for a refund and Dessy will ship her dress directly to her house. After speaking with the Mikaella manufacturers, they seemed to still be under the impression that the store was simply closed due to this supposed leak and would be back up and running in no time. So evidently the store owners - who they say they are currently in contact with (!!!) - are blatantly lying to their manufacturers, which I pointed out to them.
I also contacted the next closest bridal shop - Taylor's Bridal Boutique in Elmira - that carries Mikaella dresses to check if I could re-place my order with them. Linda was a hero: no word of an exaggeration. She contacted the manufacturer, made sure the order could transfer over, then told me to get on the phone with the credit card company to get a refund, which has been mostly successful (thanks to the sympathy from a lady who happens to have worked 15 years as a wedding coordinator). She just placed the order for me (honouring the no-tax pricing from Nicholas & Elizabeth), confirmed with the manufacturer, and my dress will be in-store in a week or two!
All in all, I lost a lot of sleep last night and it's been a hell-ish 30 hours or so, but everything is 90% fixed and we're still somewhat hopeful that I'll be able to snag my mom's dress from N&E. If not, it sounds like it will be fairly easy and quick to order directly from Dessy. I still can't wrap my head around how N&E went downhill so insanely quickly - they must have been consistently losing money since the original owners apparently retired 2 years ago.
Crisis averted, but UUUUUURGH.
