Should You Expect Delays With Your Wedding Gown Delivery?

If your 2020 wedding date is remaining on track one question you may be wondering about is if your dress will indeed make it to you on time. We spoke to Neil Berg, president of Toronto’s Richman Group and Morilee Canada Ltd. to share some industry insider information on the subject of wedding dress delivery from the manufacturing perspective and how things are moving on his end in light of COVID-19. “We are fortunate not to rely entirely on China for our garments as we own three of our own factories in Indonesia,” Berg says. “We do deal with many Chinese factories, but many of our bridal and prom dresses come to us from Indonesia as well as Myanmar; all of our bridesmaid dresses come from Indonesia.”

Berg says as of today (March 24th), the company's deliveries are running 95% on time. He notes there are a few delays in production (but this is something he deals with on a good day as it can be a routine part of the business equation) and timing is always accounted for with retailers to ensure gowns are delivered well in advance of the actual wear date. “We are able to expedite our process and, to date, have not had any issues whatsoever.”

Being a Toronto-based business, Berg will face a two-week warehouse shutdown beginning March 25th as part of legislature introduced by the Ontario government which impacts non-essential businesses. “We have already shipped many orders with due dates to the end of April,” he shares. “How this shutdown will affect us going forward is difficult to project, but we will make every effort allowable by law to fulfill each and every order. We have been in business for 65 years and we have amazing communication with our factories and retailers, and this has proven to be invaluable at this time.”

His advice if you are getting married in the back half of 2020 and have not yet ordered your gown: this is something you need to do as soon as possible when business gets back to normal. “My advice is as soon as you are able, get to a bridal retailer and have it ordered so we can start the fulfillment process ASAP. Currently we are operating from home offices and we have the ability to process orders from stores and begin manufacturing. If for some reason we are not able to fulfill orders and receive goods we have a massive stock of dresses available in our facilities in Toronto and Las Vegas.”

If you are getting married in 2021, there is no need to panic when it comes to the dress. We do, however, recommend you get proactive with your planning to ensure things stay on track as there is likely to be a ton of bookings now happening next year. For more on the subject of how retailers are handling the situation with clients, we spoke to Andrea Anastasiou of White Toronto and White Montreal who shared some valuable intel. You can read her thoughts here.