TAMPA, Fla. (WFLA) — The bankruptcy attorney handling the Alfred Angelo bridal business shutdown tells 8 On Your Side she has 7,100 emails on her iPhone from anxious brides.
“I am actually prioritizing my review of the email I am looking for people who have wedding dates within the next month or stuff in the store that I can make happen,” said Miami attorney Patricia Redmond who represents the bridal chain based in Delray Beach.
There is also the challenge of 5,400 bridal dresses, tiaras and other special-ordered wedding items stuck in bankruptcy limbo at a seaport in California.
“My goal is to find out to whom they belong and get that information to the people and let them know they should hope for something or they shouldn’t,” said Redmond.
Redmond tells 8 On Your Side countless more dresses may be caught up in the pipeline of seamstresses, shippers and closed stores.
“It’s an emergency situation,” Redmond said. “It’s a horrible thing to happen but our job is to make the best out of it that we possibly can and to where we can get a good result and happy outcome for someone we’re trying to do that.”
The Alfred Angelo bankruptcy motion that Redmond filed Friday is 1044 pages long and includes a list of more than 15,000 creditors from Florida to California, most of them brides and bridesmaids.
Creditors can contact Redmond directly at PRedmond@stearnsweaver.com. You can also try calling Redmond at 305-789-3553. Redmond is asking brides who hAve already emailed her to let her know by email if they’ve received their dresses so she can move on and try to resolve other cases.
Right now, hundreds of those brides are praying for a delivery from FedEx following the shipping of hundreds of dresses late last week. Dozens of women rushed to pick up their dresses at Alfred Angelo’s Tampa store before the doors closed at 8 p.m. on Thursday.
Bridesmaid Samantha Agnes is on the creditor list along with her sister (the bride) Jessica Rutan and two other sisters who will be bridesmaids. Agnes says everyone is anxious about the fate of dresses they’ve already paid for even though the wedding won’t take place until January.
After Alfred Angelo’s bankruptcy became a nationwide story last week other brides began reaching out to help on Twitter by offering to loan their dresses — in many cases free of charge. They’re using the hashtag #AlfredAngelo as an impromptu wedding dress exchange for brides left in the lurch of the bankruptcy.
Redmond tells us Alfred Angelo has been trying for at least eight weeks to obtain financing for a ‘soft landing” as it liquidated its assets in a more organized fashion, but in the end had to call it quits with no warning to customers.
“The company was losing for a long time but it was financed and kept borrowing money at some point the money just ran out,” Redmond said.STORIES OTHERS ARE CLICKING ON-
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