Bella You — Attraction in Town of Irondequoit

On Friday, October 10th, 2014 my mother, sister, my best friend, and I were in search of bridesmaids dresses. Bella You was the third dress shop we went to in search of a unique bridesmaid dress. Upon entering the store we were greeted by Ann. Ann was very sweet and offered to help us. She asked that I take a few moments to take a quick survey so she can better understand what I was looking for. I explained to her that I would like a bridesmaid dress that is a different style, and that I was interested in looking at their evening wear rather than their bridesmaids dresses. We proceeded to look at dresses. I found this beautiful Grecian style dress that Ann explained to me was discontinued and not available to order. I completely understood and asked if we could try on that style since it was something different from what we were seeing. We liked with a few dresses and asked Ann if she could start a fitting room for us. While she was prepping a fitting room a blonde women, who is the owner, rudely stormed over to my bridesmaid who had all the dresses in her hand and tore the dresses out of her hand and proceeded to ask her what she was doing. My bridesmaid replied that she was trying on dresses for a wedding. She asked who the bride was in the group and I quickly stepped up and said that I was. She proceeded to tell me that Grecian dress was $450 and was not available to order. I explained to her that Ann already informed us of that but we would like to try it on to see if they style of the dress was something we liked. The owner rudely discouraged us from trying on the dress and proceeded to tell us that they were not be able to help us out.

Now imagine this scenario, a newly engaged bride-to-be entered the 3rd dress shop in search of a bridesmaid dress, rudely asked to leave when all we wanted to do was try on dresses. The shop was filled with other clients! This was insulting, humiliating, and a horrible start in my search for dresses.

After leaving the shop I realized that they had all of my information form the survey I completed with Ann and truthfully I didn’t think it was necessary for them to contact me. I reentered the shop and asked Ann if she would kindly provide me with the survey I completed. I proceeded to ask Ann why we were asked to leave, when the owner again rudely interrupted and stated that Ann was new to the store and was doing everything wrong. I felt terrible for Ann, how could her boss and owner put her down to a customer in the middle of a shop filled with women? I said to the owner that Ann was doing exactly what I asked her to do, showing us dressed that weren’t your typical bridesmaid dress. I proceed to say to the manager that she is not aware of our situation and that the $450 dress was not an issue with our budget. The owners proceed to say “some groups we are able to work with, others we are not, you are just the unfortunate ones,” I stated back to her “no, you are the unfortunate one for losing our business.”

Truthfully I am not one to review stores/services/etc, however, after this horrible experience I can only hope that this review will deter you from experiencing the same level of insult my family and I received that day. I didn't even want to give this store a one star rating, but in order to publish this review I needed to select the option of "hated it," it's not even worthy...

I had a nice time at the bridal shop looking for my dress and I found it! I was so happy with the dress and even the ladies working there. Josephine, the seamstress they use, is even more AMAZING! Everything was going great until it came time to pick up my dress. Tuesday before my wedding I called to verify that my dress was ready to be picked up Thursday at noon (as was scheduled) and the woman who answered the phone looked up my dress and it wasn't in the system. So she said she would look in the back.... and it wasn't there either..... so she said she would check one lite place and THANKFULLY she found it. But why wasn't it logged in any system? Why didnt anyone know where it was? She said the owners were on vacation and she was filling in so I let it slide. Thursday comes around and I was in the area at 11am and knew they opened at 11 so I thought I'd stop by to see if it was ready.... and the doors were locked and lights were off. I thought maybe they would be coming in at 12 for my appointment so I left and came back 15 minutes before 12 and still locked. I waited until 12 and still nothing. I started calling and no one answered. It got to be 12:20 and I had to leave. I started thinking I'd have to find another dress for my wedding in 2 DAYS!! I was stressing out and panicking. Finally after I got back home (and my sister in law found her personal phone number and yelled at her) they called and said it was because they got stuck in an airport on their way back home. The owner ended up delivering it herself to my house so it turned put okay but that is NOT what I needed 2 days before my wedding. It was unnecessary stress. The LEAST they could have done was call someone to put a sign on the door so people like me would KNOW what's happening to their dresses!

All in all, beautiful dress, decently nice people and I ended up with my dress. But it was way too stressful at the end for me to...

I unfortunately had a negative experience at BellaYou. I was very excited for my appointment and ended up leaving crying after being there for only 10 minutes. I made an appointment months ahead and spoke to someone over the phone about the details of what I was looking for and my street size. I am more of a plus sized bride so I wanted to make sure they had options available. While on the phone, there was never any mention about the limited sizes in store and no sizing information is listed on their website so I made the incorrect assumption that there would be options. They even called a couple days before the appointment so there would be a second chance to let me know if there were no options available for me, but the staff member did not make any mention of it. I did not feel like there was a welcoming atmosphere, as I had to find someone to help me and they came to me a few minutes later, which is okay because I assumed they were busy. Then the staff member asked me what my size was and what I was looking for pretty publicly, when I had already discussed that months in advance and did not want to say my size publically like that. Looking through the options, I did not find any sizes any where close to my dress size. I was discouraged and embarrassed and left really quickly with tears streaming down my face. Ordering dresses on the bigger side and clipping the dress for smaller brides is customary so it’s sad that they couldn’t have any options. I love shopping small businesses but I was able to find the dress at a different local shop without feeling like I lacked any options. Please either be transparent about sizing, as it is basically impossible to try on a dress too small to see if it’s the right one, or order some larger sizes. There are some amazing shops in the area with more inclusive options I would recommend. Maybe this would be a better choice for a bride with a...