A video is circulating online of a woman inside of a bridal dress store walking around and cutting up wedding dresses. The video went viral on Chinese social media platforms and shows the woman with scissors in her hand cutting up 32 bridal gowns.
The total value of the dresses were about $11,000.
The woman is a pregnant bride-to-be who went to the store to ask for a refund of her $550 deposit back, but was denied.
According to local Chinese websites, the upset woman had booked a wedding package at a cost of 8,000 yuan (roughly $1,260 USD) with the Jiangjin District bridal company back in April 2021. Her wedding date was scheduled to be on October 5th.
But in August 2021, after finding out she was pregnant, she asked if they can postpone the wedding date to another time.
In November, the woman returned to the store and asked to cancel outright and requested her down payment back, but they refused.
The store reportedly offered to allow her put the money towards the child’s 100th day celebration, a milestone traditionally celebrated in Chinese culture, and the woman initially accepted.
Fast forward to January 9, 2022, when she suddenly came back to the store with scissors in hand:
The video shows the customer making her way around the store, cutting holes into the dozens of dresses on display as an employee calmly films her.
The employee can be heard in the video telling her to rethink what she’s doing and that some dresses are worth several thousand yuan.
“Several thousand? It’s fine, even if they’re worth several tens of thousands,” she replies, and continues cutting.
As she continues destroying the store’s inventory, she asks the employee if she was going to call the police, assuring her that it’s fine if she does, she’ll just reimburse the store.
At the end of her eerily calm rampage, she simply sits down and waits for the police to arrive. The police eventually come and take her away.
According to reports, the woman later apologized, and after negotiation, her husband-to-be offered to compensate the store 60,000 yuan ($9400); however the manager claims they have not handed over any money yet.
Commenters on social media are divided; some say she should be held criminally responsible and even imprisoned, while others insist pregnancy hormones were probably to blame, and she should be forgiven. Most agreed however that the store should be fully reimbursed for the damages.
