Heartbroken brides-to-be have accused a fashion designer of disappearing with their wedding dresses – just weeks before their big days.

According to the despairing women, boutique shop owner Natalie Wileman “vanished from the face of the Earth” after taking deposits for wedding gowns worth thousands of pounds.

Frantic with worry, the brides-to-be are now trying to find the designer and retrieve their dresses before time runs out.

Ms Wileman sold the dresses from her bridal shop, Everything But The Girl, in Chichester, before abruptly closing the business earlier this year and reopening briefly in Brighton.

Soon anxious brides-to- be began complaining on social networking sites that their dresses were nowhere to be seen.

One 24-year-old bride-to-be said: “I put down a £580 deposit on the dress when I visited the Chichester shop. Everything seemed fine.

“Then I got an email saying there was going to be a ‘relocation sale’, which set my alarm bells ringing. When I looked online and found all the bad reviews I nearly had a breakdown.”

The woman travelled to Brighton in July to confront Ms Wileman, but found that her new shop was in fact a rented room in the Brighton Media Centre, stuffed with dresses.

She said: “Natalie promised me my dress would be coming within three months. That was the last I heard from her.

“She won’t answer her phone or any of my emails.

“I’m heartbroken. I don’t have £600 to lose and I’m supposed to be getting married in February.

“A bride shouldn’t have to be worrying about her dress on the most important day of her life.”

The Argus tried to contact Ms Wileman for a response by phone and email yesterday but had received no reply at the time of going to print.

Her Facebook and Twitter pages appear to have been deleted and the Everything But The Girl website has been taken down.

Are you waiting for a wedding dress from Everything But The Girl?

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