We wore KEP for our wedding and unfortunately the experience we had was overall stressful and…read moredisappointing. We would not recommend KEP to anyone that has a strict deadline and/or anyone who expects a high level of customer service.
After receiving a few recommendations from friends, my now husband and I made an appointment in the NYC store on May 10 looking for white jackets and black pants (for made to measure) for our wedding on the west coast on August 20 (so, at least 3 months in advance). After a LOT of back and forth (finding white vs. cream fabric is a lot more difficult than it sounds) we finally found fabric that we wanted and on May 24 went through the entire process of getting measured and paying a lot of money (thousands of dollars each) for the outfits. Since KEP was a well-known brand, especially in the gay community, we were excited about our decision to splurge a little bit on this, with the expectation that the service would be great and that this would be something we didn't need to stress out about last-minute. We were very wrong.
Fast forward a month later, on June 21, we received a call from KEP saying that they actually didn't have enough of the white fabric we chose to make two jackets, and there wasn't enough time to wait until they received more in stock. So they said we should come back in to pick a different fabric. Since we already paid and already got measured and frankly didn't have enough time to go elsewhere, we rushed into the store to pick a different fabric. The new fabric we chose cost more than our original, and given the situation KEP offered it to us at no additional charge. We felt like things were back on track and looked forward to our fitting a few weeks before the wedding to make any last-minute adjustments.
More time goes by, and then we hear from KEP saying that they need to push our fitting from a few weeks before the wedding to 10 days before the wedding. We became more nervous, especially because we had planned for KEP to ship the outfits to the west coast so we wouldn't have to travel with them. Then, when that date approached, KEP said we would have to push it to 8 days before the wedding (the Friday before). We became more nervous. When we came to the fitting, we learned that only the jackets were ready, and not the pants. The jackets needed adjustments. We asked when the pants would be ready for us to try on and they said they would let us know ASAP. The entire weekend went by and we did not hear anything from them. We called, messaged, and texted just about everyone we could find who works at the company and heard nothing until Monday morning (5 days before the wedding), when they said that everything is fine and that they are shipping our pants directly to the west coast. This obviously made us extremely nervous because this meant that we wouldn't be able to trying our pants on prior to the wedding. We asked them to ship the pants to the west coast as soon as possible so we could get them tailored there if necessary. Miray (the co-founder of KEP), instead of apologizing for the last-minute scramble and rushing, reminded us how they have been good partners and assured us that the pants would be fine and that we had nothing to worry about. The pants arrived on the west coast 3 days before the wedding and they were, as expected, too big. In the midst of everything else going on, we had to rush a tailoring job (through a tailor we found on our own) and paid $90 to fix the pants. We picked up the pants the morning of the wedding.
The thing that bothered us most was not the fact that our outfits arrived behind schedule. It was the extreme lack of service we experienced throughout the entire process. Communicating with the co-founder of the company, as well as the NYC representative, was always terribly painful. There was a lack of responsiveness, a lack of answers, and a lack of urgency. For a high-end store, we found the service to be seriously disappointing. Having to deal with last-minute adjustments before your wedding (among everything else) is one of the most stressful experiences in itself, but the feeling of having to deal with it alone, without the support of the company you just paid thousands of dollars to, is the highest insult. No one from KEP ever apologized for this experience, instead saying that they understand weddings can be stressful.
After the wedding, we emailed Miray asking if they could reimburse us for the $90 rush tailoring. She did not respond. I followed up and said that we were planning to write reviews of all of our wedding vendors online. She did not respond.
