I made an appointment at Bride Beautiful because they had good reviews online and stated their dresses ranged from $500-2500 which I hoped meant that I would have plenty of options in my price range as I had fallen in LOVE with a Jenny Packham dress that was $3600 and out of my price range. They also carried Maggie Sottero dresses and I had found several I was interested in looking at.
First we get there and they were super busy which usually means very good things, our consultant comes out, she's obviously very busy, she quickly points out how the dresses are organized and gives us instructions to pick out our favorite five then tells us she's still in the middle of an appt and rushes off. So after she eventually comes back she looks up the dresses I wanted to try and they don't carry any of them and on top of it everything they had in large sample sizes was practically the same dress over and over again. Everything that wasn't a street size 4 was princess or A line and strapless with ruching or beading covering the bodice. Those dresses are all beautiful, but there was NO variety even among their ""destination"" selection of dresses. Our consultant did everything in her power to try to force me to try on a dress i wan't interested in and when that failed told me they could probably beat the price I had been quoted on a Maggie dress I had previously tried on... and that's where it got bad...
She calls her manager over and asks me which dress after i tell her she demands to know the price I was quoted all while not writing a single thing down, instead she reaches over and SNATCHES THE CARD from my hand and tells me rudely that she will be right back. Personally if you tell me you can beat someone's price I'd like you to just give me your best price and not compare your price to someone else's. So, she comes back, and is ANGRY at me, she practically yells at me over the price and demands to know if they are having a trunk sale. They were not. They WERE selling samples and that was the price I was given, with the notation that ordering the dress would be slightly more, but once I tell her that they were not having a Maggie Sottero Trunk sale she goes off! The manager was yelling at me in front of all of the customers telling me that if I buy this dress its like stealing because the company who quoted this price is selling the dress illegally and below a price threshold set by the designer. She also told me that if i buy the dress at that price then the other boutique runs the risk of having the designer pull her line from them because they violated the terms of their contract, she implies that she will turn them in, and she was very reluctant to give me the card back. After this she storms off after giving us dirty looks.
All in all - I wouldn't have purchased the dress from her even had it been cheaper. Instead we went next door (practically) to Bridal Sense and got much better treatment, and the owner even said she's gotten brides in her store after their Bride Beautiful appointments and the girls come in in tears! I wouldn't be surprised if that was the case, the other customers all seemed happy enough, but I feel like the manager was highly unprofessional and extremely rude. Having worked in customer service myself I would never give money to someone like that. If I could have given them less than 1 star i would have.
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