Skilled sewing labor ranges from $50-$200 per hour depending on the skills a job requires. Many clothing items need to be completely redesigned to match the shape of the person wearing the garment, which requires experience that entry level sewists just don't have.

Part of the pricing conversation in this industry must address the preconceived ideas people have about sewing in general. This is a field that has been historically considered to be "women's work," and we aren't very far removed from a time when every family had someone who knew how to sew. The baby boomer generation of sewists (like Carolyn) fought an uphill battle in charging for skilled sewing because society tended to think "this is just something you do on the side, as a hobby."

Now that sewing is no longer as common knowledge as it was in post WWII era, the younger generations don't have the same dismissive attitude about sewists, but that attitude of the older generations are definitely in the undercurrent of the conversation here in the American Midwest. Folks don't think twice about paying $150/hour when it's their car mechanic, but somehow there's room to criticize sewists if they want to take home more than $15/hour after paying their expenses.

Most of the time, we under estimate how much work a job will be, so we like to give a price range for each task to let you know best case scenario/worst case scenario. Most wedding gowns require 2-4 fittings that often take 1.5 each because altering one area of the dress can affect other areas.  The dresses that are simple take between 10-20 hours worth of sew time, while more complicated dresses have taken more than 80 hours of sew time in the past.

When I first answered this question, the average alterations final bill was between $700 and $800, during the tail end of the Pandemic. The average alterations bid has since grown to a range of $1000-$3500 (or more for heavily beaded gowns). Some of this has to do with the materials and designs that are popular right now. Dresses don't come shaped like people, and there is a lot of work that goes into each dress to make it shaped like the client. The reality is that it is significantly worse now, because of what the pandemic did to the market. It's my theory that formalwear companies have had to ruthlessly cut processes behind the scenes that checked on the fit at each size and the end result is that the costs of the gowns hasn't really changed, but the shape has changed significantly - thus requiring more alterations on the back end. It's as if these companies have pushed the cost of inflation onto the customer at the alterations level.

If you are part of the lucky few whose dress fits in the bust, waist, and hips areas, and all you need changed is strap length, hem length, and you need a bustle for a short train, you could expect to pay $700-$1200. If you have a longer train (which will require more bustle points) and you need the sides taken in, or bust redesigning, added to the bill, then you can expect to see that range of $1000 - $3500. If you also have beadwork, lace appliques, and you need us to line the body of the dress with extra fabric, or draft and design sleeves to be added to your dress, or insert modesty panels, or create corset backs, then you can expect the quote to begin at $2000 and likely reach $5000. We always quote a range, intending what disaster case scenario might look like, and we charge according to the time invested into your project. For example, if we bid the job expecting 50-75 hours worth of work and we end up only taking 35 hours, then your bill will reflect that. We are so covered over in work that we are not looking to take more time than necessary just to inflate the price.

By contrast, the inflation we have experienced in the last 5 years have raised the price of materials so high that I likely can't even purchase the materials for whatever price you paid for your gown. Quality beaded lace is likely more than $100 per yard and it wouldn't be uncommon to need 10 to 15 yards, and that's before we add linings and structure materials like interfacing and beading. One of our local friends who made the wedding gown for a family member had $10,000 in simply sourcing the supplies. And we haven't even discussed the time to plan the strategy - what design are we thinking, what materials will we use where, how much boning will we add, what foundations will we build into the dress (like interfacings, underlinings, interlinings, layers for better drape, etc), will we be building breast cups into the dress to support the body, etc. That all is before we talk about the actual pattern - buying commercial, designing from scratch, making a test garment to make pattern alterations before we cut up our expensive cloths, etc. Making a wedding gown from scratch and really get every step done correctly would likely take 500 hours of consistent work. Pattern development and design is a skillset worth $200-$400 per hour out here in the midwest, while the stitching and execution of the work is a skillset of $75-200.

Custom creation of a wedding gown from scratch would EASILY be a $25,000 to $50,000 venture. So, the $2000-$4000 you paid for the dress (to purchase the materials, design idea, and more than half of the execution) plus the $2000-$4000 for us to do the alterations to make the dress shaped like a human (dissemble the areas that don't fit, reshape a few seams, shorten bodices, narrow shoulders, fix circumferences, hem, bustle, press, etc) is in fact the cheapest way to have a gown fitted to your body.

Communication is KEY!! We urge you to tell us that you're looking for the budget friendly option and we'll talk through all of that with you at the fitting.

If you have a set budget, we'll help you problem solve some things you could skip if you had to, or lesser versions of a job than the most expensive one. Bustles are often a great example. We try to show a budget friendly option, but the pretty options often cost more because of the number of points involved. We have had brides skip the bustle and buy a reception dress from a regular clothing company so that it is shaped more like them than formalwear, so they can avoid the costs of an elaborate bustle.

Another great example is if the top of the dress is a bit big, well we will probably have to lift the shoulders to get the bust to sit in the right place, but maybe we don't take the side seams in if its only a little big.  

I can not stress this enough: 

If companies catered to every shape/size combination, it would put them out of business because the inventory would be a cost they couldn't absorb. I've shared this image on many pages, but essentially, they create dresses in a small size and then cut the pattern into a grid, adding width and height to each new size, but bodies don't really change like that. Pay attention to the shoulder area, when we gain and lose weight, our shoulder bones don't get further apart.

Short answer? No.

Here's why:

1. Price of Fabric: The fast fashion industry has created a scenario where you can purchase an ENTIRE DRESS for the price it would take for sewists simply to BUY THE FABRIC - ONLY.  When we buy fabric in the United States, it has gone from the factories that make the fabric through several middle companies, each marking it up and charging for shipping before it is available at our local stores. The bridal industry can buy fabric in the country the clothing is being made and skip some of those middle companies. Then the dress is constructed abroad with foreign labor prices, which we will NEVER be able to compete with and make a livable wage. Bridesmaid dresses can often be purchased for LESS money than the fabric will cost. Wedding Gown materials can cost well over $2000 - for the fabric alone! As I stated in an earlier question, a sewing friend of ours had $10,000 in JUST MATERIALS.
2. The Prep before Construction: Pattern companies don't design patterns any closer to fitting people than the bridal industry does. Either the pattern must be altered before we make the garment, or we make the garment and still have to go through all the alterations of fitting the dress to your shape. Pattern manipulation is a separate skill from alterations and is more of a drafting and designing skill set.  Drafting a pattern from scratch OR altering a ready made pattern to be shaped like the customer requires labor that would START in the $500-$1000 range - all before we even sit down to the sewing machine!!
3. The sew time: Now the entire garment has to be constructed. With all the steps involved in creating a Wedding gown, the sewing process could easily take 200-500 hours and requires a skill set that averages somewhere between $100-$200 per hour. Complete construction of an entire wedding gown can easily cost between $10,000-$50,000. 

In the end, buying the dress and having it altered is the cheapest way to have a custom shaped, custom sized dress. 

Great question. This is definitely a personal one-to-one service industry. Because the attitude of older generations with regard to sewing is that it's "just something you do on the side, out of your house, as a hobby," I'm afraid there isn't a longstanding history of tipping sewists. However, we are seeing recognition from Gen X, Millennials and Gen Z that they expect to tip. In our shop, its way more typical that we underbid the job in the first place and that we have way more hours into a dress than what we bid it for, because it's easy to forget the value of our knowledge. We are blown away every time we receive a tip and its still new and humbling for us.