Late gowns, bounced checks: KC bridal shop struggled for months before plans to close

When Abby Ostronic first flew back from College Station, Texas, to her hometown of Lenexa in search of a wedding dress, her experience at The One Bridal was what any bride could’ve hoped for.

A stylist helped find dresses that matched her inspiration and entertained her along with eight close friends and family members. The staff were kind and inviting, and the shop carried designers she liked, Ostronic said.

Eventually, she tried on the gown that felt right for her beach nuptials in Mexico. It had a sweetheart neckline and a floral lace bodice with accents that were unique, but not overpowering.

Ostronic paid a 60% deposit on the order — totaling around $1,300 — and staff helped her cancel a dress fitting appointment with another Kansas City area shop she originally planned to visit. In six to nine months, the shop told her the dress would be ready.

But her fairy tale experience with The One Bridal ended there.

Ostronic was among several brides who spoke to The Star about major delays and communication issues they’ve had with The One Bridal, which plans to shutter its Kansas City shop in the coming weeks following a move and a bankruptcy filing.

The store is no longer accepting appointments with new clients and is holding sales to clear out the remainder of its inventory.

Former staff said they left their jobs after the shop was unable to pay them consistently. Some have claimed the store owes employees thousands of dollars in unpaid wages. Since leaving, they’ve fielded questions from dozens of brides, who worry they won’t receive their wedding dresses as their wedding dates loom closer.

The One Bridal’s owner Ashley Jones said the shop moved to a new space and filed for bankruptcy in the spring to reduce overhead, but because of a dip in sales — in part, she said, because of negative online reviews — the shop had to lay off its staff in the last few months.

Jones said she’s working to get dresses to every bride who has ordered from the store, but said the process has been complicated by customers and a former manager reaching out to designers directly rather than going through The One Bridal to get information on their orders.

‘I wouldn’t have had a wedding dress’

Around six or seven months after her bridal appointment, Ostronic called the store to check on her dress. The store’s owner, Ashley Jones, told her she talked with the designer and learned the dress was in its finishing stages and would be shipped to Dallas for pick-up, she said.

About two months passed with no updates from Jones or the store even when Ostronic reached out, she said. In December, about six weeks from her wedding date, she still hadn’t received the dress or heard any updates about its arrival.

Eventually, Ostronic’s maid of honor reached out to Eddy K, the wedding dress designer, who told them the dress had been ready for about six weeks but never shipped because the designer hadn’t received payments from The One Bridal for Ostronic’s gown and a handful of others, Ostronic said.

“Without (my maid of honor) doing that,” Ostronic said, “I wouldn’t have had a wedding dress on my wedding day.”

Since they hadn’t heard from The One Bridal, the designer told Ostronic they would ship her the dress overnight. Her mother paid the designer around $1,800 for the dress on top of the deposit she gave The One Bridal months before.

At that point, Jones reached back out to Ostronic and told her the dress would be arriving at the Raya Grace Bridal store in Dallas — which Jones described as a partner store of The One Bridal — but said she couldn’t provide her with a tracking number for the shipment, Ostronic said.

Instead, the dress arrived at her doorstep from the designer, Ostronic said. The veil she ordered from The One Bridal never arrived.

While it was made to her measurements, the dress was about two centimeters too big on both sides, which required a tailor to take the gown apart and put it back together, Ostronic said. The tailor rushed the order and finished the dress in about a week for an extra $650.

Her sister found her a new veil, and the ceremony took place in Mexico in January. It was a perfect day, Ostronic said, but the weeks leading up to it were tainted because of her experience with the shop.

“It just hurts to hear other people going through that,” Ostronic said. “My experience at the shop was phenomenal, but after that, unfortunately, (it was) really, really disappointing.”

Jones said The One Bridal has always set out to deliver dresses within the period laid out on their contracts — between six and nine months. By calling the designers directly, she said customers create “some confusion and chaos” in terms of communication.

With Ostronic’s situation, Jones said she had made consistent payments to the dress designer once the store filed for bankruptcy, but at one point the designer charged her card too much, she said.

Jones filed a chargeback, which she said created further communication issues between her and the designer, and she involved her attorney to try to resolve it, she said.

Because brides have heard about the store closing and reports of issues with dresses, Jones said they’re also canceling charges on their credit cards, creating more issues for the shop.

Jones said she’s been working to contact every bride and let them know the status of their orders as well as where to pick up their dress, as some gowns will be shipped to other stores once The One Bridal closes. She also is in touch with all designers to try to clear up confusion about the situation, Jones said.

She encouraged all customers to reach out to The One Bridal for updates on their orders. If a customer has to leave a voicemail, Jones said she tries to respond within 48 hours.

‘We were kept in the dark’

Since leaving her job as store manager of The One Bridal in December, Ashley Mitchell said at least 50 brides have reached out to her and other former staff members through LinkedIn and other social media for help getting their wedding dresses.

“They’re frantic,” Mitchell said, “and they’re wanting answers.”

At first, Mitchell enjoyed her role as a stylist at The One, where she had worked since October 2020. She spent her days around beautiful gowns and helped brides find the dresses they dreamed of wearing to celebrate a major day in their lives.

When Jones offered her the store manager position in January 2022, Mitchell said she was thrilled to accept. In the new role, she communicated with designers and brand representatives and trained new staff.

In her first year at The One, Mitchell said it was normal across the industry for dresses to arrive later than expected because of supply chain issues caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. If brides called with questions about their dress, she looked to Jones for an answer and didn’t think much of it.

But the dress delays continued beyond that initial period, Mitchell said.

At the start of 2023, designers started asking Mitchell when they would receive payments from Jones for dress orders, she said. Even though Jones was copied on most communication between the designers and the store, Mitchell said they often didn’t hear back from Jones until she stepped in to remind her.

Designers would reach out to Mitchell repeatedly to say they hadn’t heard from Jones about dress orders, Mitchell said.

Jones would tell Mitchell she paid for the order a while back, but designers would say they never received the payment. Sometimes, Mitchell said, Jones would tell her that the designers were wrong and the payments had been made. Other times, Jones told her there was a fraud hold on the credit card because the transactions were with international designers.

Mitchell continued working for the shop. Starting last February, Mitchell said she also took on the responsibility of managing Raya Grace Bridal, the Dallas partner store, and traveled between the two cities.

The issues continued to pile up.

When The One Bridal closed its Lenexa location around May 2023 and moved to its downtown Kansas City location at 2110 Wyandotte Street, Mitchell said she had maybe a week’s notice.

Staff members were surprised and didn’t know why the shop would change locations or why Jones would close the off-the-rack shop that previously occupied the Wyandotte Street space. Jones told them the move would help reduce overhead.

Because Jones asked her, Mitchell said she also signed a lease for an apartment across the street from the new location, where the seamstresses worked.

At the time, Mitchell and other staff didn’t know that Jones owed more than $40,000 in rent at the Lenexa City Center location, according to Johnson County court records.

By December 2023, Jones had failed to appear in court, and City Center filed a petition for eviction. The court ruled Jones owed more than $177,000 to City Center. Staff also didn’t know that the business had filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy in May 2023 until several months later.

“We were kept in the dark just as much as everybody else,” Mitchell said. “We were also lied to just as much as everybody else.”

Starting around August, Mitchell said she and other staff members handled daily calls from brides angered they didn’t have updates on their gowns, even though Jones allegedly told them they’d been ordered and shipped.

“We had no idea that, five months later, everything was going to come to a head,” Mitchell said, “and there’s no money left, and they can’t even pay us for the work that we did for them.”

Employee’s paychecks began bouncing intermittently around October, Mitchell said. The store had switched from an official payroll system to paper checks from Jones. Some workers’ checks had declined so many times that Mitchell said their banks refused to accept checks from the store.

At first, Jones would pay workers a few days later, once she had more money in the account, Mitchell said. But employees chose to leave the store after they stopped receiving paychecks. Many are still owed money, she said.

The One Bridal owes Mitchell $1,385 in back wages, Mitchell said. Two other former employees filed wage claims with the Kansas Department of Labor in January, according to documents obtained by The Star.

A seamstress wrote The One Bridal owed her more than $8,600 for 10 weeks of work, and a lead stylist and social media marketer claimed the shop owed her nearly $3,800 for a month of work.

When employees tried to ask about pay, a former seamstress, who asked not to be identified, said Jones told them excuses, like the money would be wired the next day or that a fraud issue came up on the bank account. For her time at the shop, she said she hasn’t received pay stubs or a W-2.

The seamstress told The Star she stayed on staff until November despite pay discrepancies because she and her team wanted to make sure the brides had the custom-fitted dresses they had been promised. Dress orders sometimes arrived the week of a wedding, requiring the seamstresses to work overnight to complete alterations in time, she said.

“We were hampered a bit by a lack of information,” the seamstress said. “We didn’t know where a dress might be or when it was coming in. It was very aggravating.”

Jones said the store had struggled once it moved into its new location and while trying to pull out of bankruptcy. The business had trouble making ends meet, so Jones said she began laying staff off in October or November. She estimates that she owes final paychecks to two employees and two paychecks to another former worker.

Workers’ assertions that they left their positions aren’t entirely true, Jones said. She said she had discussions with staff to let them know they would be laid off because of the shop’s money issues and offered contract positions to the seamstresses, who declined the offer.

Jones also said that, even though Mitchell stopped working at the store in December, she was able to log back into the store’s email system and forward more than 1,200 emails to her personal account. The communication between Mitchell and the designers and brides has created more confusion and issues for The One Bridal, Jones said.

Jones said she filed a report with the Johnson County Sheriff’s Office against Mitchell and is talking with an attorney about further action.

Mitchell said Jones’ claims aren’t true. She said she didn’t use the company email to reach out to brides. Designers and brides continued to reach out to her personally after she left the shop because of continued issues with payments and order delays.

Only Jones, she said, is responsible for the confusion.

“All I’m trying to do is help them get their dresses,” Mitchell said.

Jones also never talked told employees about layoffs, Mitchell said. She said staff left after they stopped being paid.

Mitchell said some customers who purchased from the store’s Lenexa location have filed complaints with the Johnson County District Attorney’s Office. Anyone who feels they’ve been deceived by an area business can contact the office at 913-715-3300.

‘It’s been weighing on me’

Leslie Stotts, a Dallas bride who shopped at Raya Grace Bridal, said she put a $9,800 deposit on a dress in October, only to learn about two months out from her April wedding that the designer never accepted the order because they were owed payment from the shop on past orders. The information, Stotts said, came in a text from a store manager.

She cried, rushed to book appointments at other bridal shops and found a dress that could be ordered and tailored in time. Stotts’ mom disputed the Raya Grace charge on her credit card and hopes she’ll see the deposit money again.

Julie Vino, the designer of Stotts’ original dress, also reached out and offered her a dress at a 50% discount that they promised to rush to her, but Stotts declined since she already found a replacement.

In the meantime, Stotts said she’s searching for other brides who have ordered from Raya Grace, so she can warn them of her experience and encourage them to get in touch with their designers directly. She’s heard from a handful of Dallas-area brides who have had similar issues.

“I just want the girls here that don’t know to find out,” Stotts said, “because that makes me sick to my stomach thinking about other people in this situation.”

Raya Grace Bridal is being converted to only offer off-the-rack sales, Jones said.

Lexis Lowery drove around two hours in May from Manhattan to The One Bridal’s Lenexa store, where she and her loved ones were greeted by staff and offered champagne, mimosas and snacks. Her stylist selected several dresses that met Lowery’s criteria, and the first one was the one she wanted to wear walking down the aisle.

She paid a deposit of around $3,200 at the store, and made a final payment of nearly $2,200 in July.

About three months later, when Lowery was touring a venue, she told the owner she ordered a gown from The One, and the venue owner told her about the financial trouble the shop had been experiencing. Lowery decided to stay positive and have faith in the shop, but months went by with few updates. At one point, she said the store told Lowery the dress would arrive in May, about a month out from her June wedding.

Last week, the store told her they were in touch with the designer and would send her tracking information, but Lowery said she hasn’t received it yet.

Lowery saw and reposted a story from FOX4 about issues brides like Ostronic had at The One and heard from Mitchell, the former store manager, who told her the dress had been ready to ship from the designer since October but was sitting because they hadn’t received payment from Jones.

Since then, Lowery has been in touch with the designer and Mitchell. If Jones doesn’t pay the designer, they told Lowery they could still ship the dress directly to her, but she’ll need to pay a wholesale price of $1,700 for the gown.

Lowery created a GoFundMe to help reimburse her for the money she may have lost in her payments to The One.

After doing everything she was supposed to — searching for a dress more than a year out from her wedding date, with more than enough time for possible shipping delays, fittings and alterations — she said the dress has caused the most stress as she continues to plan her wedding.

“It’s just been weighing on me mentally,” Lowery said. “I’ve been stressed, I’ve been depressed just because I had no idea, and I felt helpless.”