Bride-to-be without wedding dress days before ceremony after Pittsburg bridal shop closes
PITTSBURG, Calif. (KGO) -- UPDATE: Akila now has an all-new wedding dress, thanks to a generous bridal shop owner in South San Francisco.
It's a wedding dress nightmare for an East Bay woman who is getting married in less than two weeks and doesn't have a wedding dress.
It seems the bridal store where she bought the dress to be tailored is now closed.
"I'm excited about being married, now I'm very nervous for the wedding... I'm not gonna lie!"
Bride-to-be Akila Mwongozi is a bit nervous because the beautiful dress that she had planned to wear on her upcoming wedding Sept. 1 is nowhere to be found. Literally the bridal shop Bellisima Couture, where she bought the dress and was getting it tailored in Pittsburg, is now gone.
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"Completely empty! No dresses no nothing. I was just like what is going on. I honestly thought something had happened to her," said Mwongozi.
Mwongozi was able to make contact with the woman who ran the place. That woman told her to come by a house down the street to get the dress, but no one was there when she went.
No one was there when we stopped by on Wednesday.
"It looks dark inside, I'm not sure if anyone is home," said ABC7 News Reporter J.R. Stone.
Those living near the bridal shop actually saw the woman packing up the dresses and clearing this place out.
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"All I saw was her working alone and racks being moved and dresses being moved out," said Stefani Blakley of Pittsburg.
Mwongozi's friends are outraged over what happened and saddened that we're now less than two weeks from the wedding and she doesn't have a dress.
"Let me tell you J.R., I'm that friend who will go camp out in front of this person's house. That is what I was ready to do because who does this to someone? You have to be heartless to do something like this. It's disgusting to me," said Carlina Williams.
"I have one person that didn't even know me that saw a post on Facebook and sent a dress to UPS in San Diego, so if I can fit it you know that may be the dress and then I have a friend who has two dresses so we're working with those three dresses. I don't know if I can fit in them but I'll have about three days to figure that out once I get to San Diego."
Mwongozi is remaining positive though, nervous but excited to marry her fiancé, and trying to ease the situation with humor. She says she almost brought his tux to this store, too.
"That was almost gone too because I took his suit to her to get altered. I also took my goddaughter's dress to get altered but 'cause she was taking a while with my stuff, I decided to go somewhere else and we got it back quickly. Thank God I didn't leave that there, otherwise I would have lost my veil... that and everything else," said Mwongozi.
As for the bridal shop, we reached out, but just like Mwongozi, haven't heard back.
