Denise Buzy-Pucheu, founder and owner of The Persnickety Bride, said steep tariffs on imports from China are hurting U.S. businesses, including bridal shops and wedding dress designers. Some of the brands she carries have added a tariff surcharge.
Courtesy of The Persnickety Bride; Photograph by Stella Blue Photography
Days after President Donald Trump announced steep tariffs on imports from China, Denise Buzy-Pucheu sat on the couch in her bridal boutique and fired up the shop’s iPhone.
In a video later posted on Instagram, the founder of The Persnickety Bride in Newtown, Conn. spoke directly to brides and prospective customers and outlined how the 145% tariff on Chinese imports would roil the bridal business, in particular.
Almost all bridal gowns are made in China or other parts of Asia — and so are many of the fabrics, buttons, zippers and other materials they use. Skilled seamstresses are hard to find and often come from older generations in the U.S. And manufacturing in other countries, where labor generally costs less, has put the prices of high-quality bridal gowns within reach for many American families.
“This type of work is not just not something you can pick up and bring to the United States,” she said in the video. “We just don’t have those technicians here to do that.”
Tariffs on Chinese imports have hit a wide range of consumer goods, including T-shirts, patio furniture, baby strollers and toys. Yet the bridal gown and special occasion apparel business illustrates the damage duties can cause to small businesses ingrained in the global supply chain.
Most of its sales come from independent shops across the country that carry bridal gowns, tuxedos, prom dresses and more. They cater to customers with firm deadlines, tight budgets and high expectations, often making custom orders placed weeks or months before an item is made or shipped.
On top of those dynamics, the industry is particularly vulnerable to the tariffs. An estimated 90% of wedding dresses are made in China, according to the National Bridal Retailers Association — though a growing number of brands have moved manufacturing to other parts of Asia, such as Myanmar and Vietnam. The industry group represents approximately 6,000 wedding and special occasion shops across the U.S.
David’s Bridal has sped up moving its production out of China because of tariffs. By July, it aims to produce all of its dresses in other countries, including Myanmar, Sri Lanka and Vietnam.
David’s Bridal
The particular pain the industry will feel has led it — like others highly exposed to tariffs — to push for carveouts from the duties. In the past two weeks, NBRA has launched a letter-writing campaign to U.S. senators and representatives to urge lawmakers and the White House to allow an exemption. The industry already pays a tariff that started during the first Trump administration, along with a separate duty.
A White House spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment on whether Trump would consider an exemption.
Some big names in bridal gowns started an online petitionincluding Stephen Lang, the founder and CEO of Trenton, N.J.-based brand Mon Cheri.
Lang said he’s lost sleep over the tariffs. He worries they will put the 120-employee company he started in 1991 — and many of the shops that carry his dresses — out of business.
Many of those stores were already struggling to cover expenses like rent and employee wages, he said. And the boutiques’ business models have felt squeezed as some customers use them as “try-on shops,” only to buy a similar, cheaper alternative online.
If shops and dress brands close their doors for good, he said not just businesses — but also the ritual of finding garments for special occasions and family milestones — will be lost.
“Our industry is going to get wiped out if it doesn’t change,” he said.
If tariffs continue at the same level, mom-and-pop shops like those owned by Sandra Gonzalez will have to make tough choices. Gonzalez, the vice president of NBRA, said dresses she carries in her Sacramento, Calif. shop have cost her between 5% and 25% more because of tariffs.
She’s held off on raising prices, but she said she’s not sure how much longer she can wait.
“It’s on a week-by-week basis,” Gonzalez said.
Sticker shock for brides
For many brides, wedding dresses already cause sticker shock.
A bride in the U.S. spent an average of $2,100 on a wedding dress, according to the 2025 Real Weddings Study by The Knot, a global company that sells wedding-related services and has a directory of wedding vendors.
And that’s not the only expense on the list. Altogether, the average spending per wedding totaled $31,428, according to The Wedding Report, a market research company for the industry. Some estimates run even higher: The Knot puts the average cost at $33,000, while David’s Bridal estimates it is an average of $37,500.
The financial crunch brides already face has made it more urgent for bridal shops and designers to find ways to manage higher costs from tariffs without losing their shoppers to cheap online alternatives.
Shoppers exit from David’s Bridal Shop near Harrisburg. David’s Bridal LLC announced on Monday, April 17, 2023,.
Paul Weaver | Lightrocket | Getty Images
David’s Bridal, which has nearly 200 stores across the country, has sped up efforts to move all of its manufacturing out of China. The Pennsylvania-based wedding company, which has gone through bankruptcy twice and is in the middle of an effort to modernize its businesssells wedding dresses that range from $99 to approximately $6,000.
As of the end of last year, about 48% of the company’s merchandise was made in China. By the end of this year, the company aims to have nearly all of its production out of China and in other countries, including Myanmar, Vietnam and Sri Lanka, CEO Kelly Cook said. Imports from those countries face a much lower tariff than China — at least for now — after Trump announced a 90-day pause on higher tariffs for some countries in early April.
Cook said the company also worked to get 300,000 dresses to the U.S. before tariffs began and has looked for ways to cut costs across the business, such as using new artificial intelligence tools, so it does not need to raise prices.
“Our last resort, absolutely last resort, is to pass an increase on to the customer due to a tariff,” she said.
Surcharges and slowed production
As they face the cost increases, major bridal brands have started to add tariff surcharges, a percentage-based added cost that’s typically shared by bridal boutiques and customers.
Mon Cheri, for example, has tacked on a 39% tariff surcharge for shops. It’s also taken other steps to manage costs, including cutting its production roughly in half since tariffs started, Lang said. It is only shipping orders that it needs, such as custom dresses for specific wedding dates.
The company imports about 90% of all merchandise and about 80% of bridal items from China. It sells wedding dresses ranging from $500 to $20,000 that are carried by specialty shops across the country.
For brides, the new surcharge for shops translates to a roughly 15% retail price increase, Lang said. For example, the average price for the company’s bridal dresses is $2,200, so it would add $300 to the price paid by a customer.
Another New Jersey-based bridal brand, Justin Alexander, has also added tariff surcharges to its dresses, said Justin Warshaw, its creative director and CEO. For brides, he said, those surcharges have translated to an approximately 6% retail price increase. For example, he said, a $2,000 dress will now cost a customer $120 more.
Yet he said the company decided to absorb the cost difference for dresses that brides ordered before the tariffs began, a decision that could wipe out its profits.
“We understand a bride said yes to the dress at a price,” he said.
About half of the company’s production is in China, followed by 45% in Vietnam and 5% in Myanmar, Warshaw said. Its dresses range in price from about $1,500 to $12,000.
But some designers, wedding dress shops and companies said their plans may change if tariff levels drop. David’s Bridal, for example, said it may keep up to 25% of production in China if duties decrease. Some boutiques are telling brides or including in contracts that they will subtract the portion of tariff surcharges included in the price if policy changes and import costs decline, Gonzalez of NBRA said.
Atlanta-based bridal dress brand Anne Barge is wrapping up its business in China and exiting the country altogether, the company’s CFO Steven Jacobs said.
If the company had stayed in China with the higher tariff level, its retail prices would have shot up, he said. For instance, Anne Barge’s Norfolk dress – which currently costs $3,730– would have jumped nearly 65% to $6,150.
Jacobs and his wife, creative director and CEO Shawne Jacobs, bought the higher-end bridal brand in 2014. Back then, all of the company’s dresses were made in China, which has long had the specialized workforce to produce wedding dresses.
Yet the husband-and-wife team has seen firsthand the complexities – and cost challenges – of manufacturing in the U.S., one of the Trump administration’s stated goals of the tariffs.
Motivated in part by Covid-related supply chain shocks, Shawne and Steven Jacobs opened a manufacturing facility for their luxury bridal line near the company’s Atlanta headquarters. The line of wedding dresses range between $4,000 and $14,000.
“It worked because of our price points,” Shawne Jacobs said. “But we’re talking about luxury goods.”
It has taken about two years to scale up to a 35-person facility and to recruit the pattern makers, seamstresses and other workers needed to make the detailed dresses, Shawne Jacobs said. Many of the company’s skilled sewers are immigrants, she said, a pool of talent now threatened by Trump’s stricter immigration policies.
And she said Asia is still crucial for production: All of Anne Barge’s lower-priced bridal line, Blue Willow, is made in Vietnam. She said making those dresses and maintaining their under $3,000 price points in the U.S. wouldn’t be possible.
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