THE MARRIAGE PLOT

Does the wedding website the Knot have a “fake brides” problem?

- BY ADAM ISCOE

"It's very fishy," one venue owner said, to get so many leads and so few replies.

On a recent afternoon, a dressmaker named Sergio Guadarrama rummaged through a pile of fabric. He and his partner had converted the living room of their home, in Hudson, New York, into a bridal atelier. Rolls of satin were stacked under a worktable; a mannequin in a strapless gown made of Chantilly lace stood near an armoire. Scattered around were five sewing machines and hundreds of yards of organic linen, greige hemp canvas, ombré silk brocade, and all manner of other textiles. Guadarrama had the look of a man at ease-leather slippers, a loose denim shirt, and a big, bright smile though his eyes betrayed a hint of exhaustion. After a few minutes, he found what he was searching for and held it up: a swatch of vintage flowerprinted silk voile from Christian Dior. "This one is to die for!" he said.

The Dior fabric would be sewn into a custom wedding dress for a twentyfive-year-old bride-to-be, Keelie Verbeek, who had just driven down from New Hampshire. Verbeek arrived at Guadarrama's house with her sister, her mother, two pairs of high heels, and her mother's wedding gown (bespoke, purchased at a bridal shop in Cicero, New York, in the eighties), which she wanted to incorporate into her own dress, somehow. Guadarrama suggested that he could remove tiny pearls from the old gown's surface and sew them onto the new one. "I can kind of sprinkle them in," he said. Verbeek nervously glanced at her mother, who shrugged. Then she disappeared into Guadarrama's bathroom for her first fitting, with a prototype made from cotton muslin. Kade Johnson, Guadarrama's business partner and fiancé, cautioned, "We had to leave the toilet seat up, because the cat pees in the toilet here."