https://youtu.be/-8WedOxsacc
After nearly 80 years in business, popular bridal boutique Alfred Angelo permanently closed its doors on July 14, leaving hundreds of brides scrambling.
But one Oklahoma City seamstress is being hailed as a wedding angel by nearly 60 Oklahoma brides.
Rose Ellis has been working with Alfred Angelo, doing alterations for the past seven years. She was picking up dresses at the Oklahoma City location earlier this month when the store manager informed her that she needed to contact all of her brides as the store was shutting down permanently at 6 p.m.
The chain, which had 60 stores across the U.S., was filing for Chapter 7 bankruptcy. They contacted customers via the website and messages, but still hundreds of brides were blind-sided by the abrupt closure.
Rose gathered 60 of the dresses that had already been paid for and brought them home with her. Not only did she save the day for dozens of brides, but Rose also reached out to each customer she had contact information for and let them know she would still be doing the alterations for them at no additional charge.
“They’re very excited that I have their dress and sorry that I’m going through all of this,” Rose said. “It’s not fair for me to charge them again and I wouldn’t hold their dresses for ransom either, that’s crazy as well.”
Rose says she hasn’t been paid by Alfred Angelo since June. But her pro-bono good deed has not gone unnoticed.
A bride named Stephanie Huey learned Rose had her bridesmaid’s dresses through Facebook. They had been awaiting alterations at the Oklahoma City store, leaving Stephanie in a panic when the chain shut down.
Stephanie Huey
She got in touch with Rose, and after learning she had dozens of dresses in her possession, Stephanie used social media to reach out to other frantic brides in the area. She then arranged for a local hotel to donate space for Rose to reunite the brides with their dresses.
“When I got to the hotel, she had only brought four or five dresses and I asked her, ‘Where are the other dresses?’ and she said, ‘I’m not finished with those yet,'” Stephanie recalled.
“I was just dumbfounded,” she continued. “I thought her good deed was just to bring the dresses back to everyone, but she was still doing all the alterations—and for free.”
Stephanie launched a GoFundMe for Rose, who travels from her home in Tulsa to Oklahoma City every week to pick up and alter dresses for brides in the area. She hopes the funds will help offset the cost of travel and free alterations for the wedding dress angel.
Rose says her main concern is getting every single one of the dresses into the hands of their rightful owner.
“My agenda is to make sure that all my brides I have come in contact with have that fabulous wedding day that they were expecting to have from the beginning,”
As for the future, Rose says she just plans to “wait and see.”
“But I can just say, ‘Hey, if my girls are taken care of and they can walk down the aisle with a smile, there’s no worries.'”
