For more than 70 years, thousands of brides have traveled to Kleinfeld Bridal in New York City to find their wedding day looks. From the moment you walk through the doors, you’ll feel the magic of Kleinfeld. Not only does Kleinfeld have 30,000 square feet filled with the largest selection of wedding dresses in the world, it also has the greatest professional staff of over 200 employees who are dedicated to finding and perfecting your bridal look.
Whether you’re just starting your wedding dress search or you’ve found your dress (!!) and are getting ready to start your alterations fittings soon, every bride at some point during the wedding planning process will need to have her dress altered to fit her shape. With that, we’ve rounded up 9 of our best fun facts about our alterations department so you can feel prepared for your own fittings. Get the scoop, below.
We alter about 5,000 dresses per year.
You heard that right—our alterations department alters just about 5,000 dresses per year. Think that’s a crazy number? Our sales floor sees over 18,000 brides a year!
We have a room dedicated JUST to beading.
If your dress has beading work, whether it’s a fully beaded mermaid or has some detailing at the waist, your dress will most likely visit our beading room. Typically our expert beaders will remove beading before your dress is altered, and then your dress will be sent back to beading to have the beads reattached once the alterations are complete. Or, if you’ve decided to make customizations to your dress, our beaders will add necessary beading where you’d like it!
It takes over 30 hours of work to complete alterations on a Kleinfeld wedding dress.
We always say the magic really happens downstairs in our alterations department, and we weren’t lying! From sewing, to beading, to quality control and finally to pressing and packing, your gown will be worked on by our alterations team for about 30 hours total in order to fit your gown to your specifications.
Over 100 people work in our alterations department.
With over 5,000 dresses a year to alter, Kleinfeld needs a large and knowledgeable staff to help make it happen! Our alterations department employs over 100 people, including alterations managers, fitters, sewers, beaders and pressers.
Our busy season is BUSY.
Wedding season starts May 1st and extends to October 31st, and this is when the Kleinfeld Alterations Department is busiest. In our alterations department alone, we see on average about 130 brides for fittings each day!
Your dress arrives big for a reason!
When you come in for an appointment and say yes to the dress of your dreams, our bridal managers then take three measurements—your bust, waist and hips, and special order your dress to the largest of those three measurements. With that, don’t be surprised when you come in for your first appointment that your dress is large! Our expert staff will work to fit your dress to your liking so that it’s just for you.
There’s over 200 years of experience between our fitters.
Amongst our 19 fitters, there’s over 205 years of experience working to fit brides into their dream dresses. You know you’re in great hands when you choose to alter your gown with Kleinfeld!
Each dress goes through quality control before pickup.
Before you pick up your dress, whether it was altered with us or you’ve chosen to take it elsewhere, your gown will go through our quality control department to make sure your dress is up to our standards. No bead, appliqué or crystal will be out of place, as our team goes the extra mile to make sure every aspect of your dress is looked over and tended to as needed.
Dresses are specially packed in a unique way.
A great perk of altering your wedding dress at Kleinfeld is the way it’s specially packed for pickup. Our pressing team creates a bust form perfectly shaped out of cardboard and paper to fit your dress as if you were wearing it right out of the store—from there, your dress is hung on the bust form, pressed and steamed, wrapped in plastic and covered in a Kleinfeld cloth bag.