Seamstress from abruptly bankrupt bridal store reunites brides with wedding gowns

'I was just dumbfounded,' one grateful bride-to-be says

Wedding dresses at the 2016 Alfred Angelo Disney Fairy Tale Weddings Bridal Collection fashion show (Bryan Bedder/Getty Images for Alfred Angelo)

An Oklahoma seamstress has saved dozens of panicked brides after one of the world's largest wedding dress retailers abruptly shut its doors.

Rose Ellis is a contract seamstress for Alfred Angelo, the wedding dress behemoth that shuttered more than 60 stores last week, after filing for bankruptcy. Brides-to-be were given little warning of the shut-down, meaning many of them lost the dresses waiting for them at the store.

Ms Ellis first heard of the store's closing on the day it happened, when she came in to collect some alterations. Anticipating the frenzy that would ensue, she took the situation into her own hands: She personally picked up about 60 dresses left at the store to return to the brides herself.

Not only that, she did all the alternations for free.

"I was just dumbfounded," said Stephanie Huey, a bride whose dress Ms Ellis rescued and altered. "I thought her good deed was just to bring the dresses back to everyone, but she was still doing all the alterations – and for free."

Ms Ellis called all the women whose phone numbers she had, and connected with others via Facebook. At first, she paid for all of the travel expenses needed to deliver the dresses herself. Now, a grateful bride is paying for her to stay in a motel nearby.

"[The brides] are very excited that I have their dress and sorry that I’m going through all of this," Ms Ellis told ABC. "It’s not fair for me to charge them again and I wouldn’t hold their dresses for ransom either, that’s crazy as well."

The wedding dress panic appears to have united brides and seamstresses across the country: In Washington state, seamstress Mina Baayoud has also pledged herself to finishing the alterations left after the Alfred Angelo shut down.

Meanwhile, dozens of former brides have taken to social media to offer up their wedding dresses to affected brides-to-be. Using the hashtag “dressmatcher,” they are offering their second-hand dresses to anyone not lucky enough to have been saved by a seamstress.