Bella Bridal Boutique — Local services in Lake Elmo

STAY AWAY!! I have had 3 very bad experiences with this place. The first one wasn't technically about me, but it affected me. My sister had bought her wedding dress here. Once her dress came in, she went to try it on 2 weeks before her wedding and it was 2 sizes TOO SMALL!! Bella apologized and said they would do everything in their power to make it right and they'd take care of all the shipping costs and alterations for her. Once they rush ordered the right size dress and got it into the store, my sister went to try it on. It was big and needed some alterations, which Bella had expressed that they would take care of. Well...they quickly changed their minds and sent my sister a bottle of champagne and a VISA gift card to spend in THEIR store. They refused to pay for anything else and treated both my sister and our mom like crap. Very rude and unprofessional. After our mom talked with them and told them that this wasn't right, they did agree to paid for SOME of the alterations, but it still didn’t justify the fact that they were the ones that screwed up and told us they would take care of EVERYTHING in the first place. They took no blame for the situation and didn't seem to care about my sister or her wedding dress. My second experience I had with them was about 2 months ago when I went with one of my best friends to find bridesmaid dresses for her wedding this October. We went looking in search of a dress and found one. We had asked how much the dress was and were assured that the dress wouldn’t be over $250 including taxes and plus size because we were all pretty much on a budget and couldn’t afford anything over that amount. My best friend said yes to the bridesmaid dresses and from there all the girls got sized and were ready to pay for our dresses. Once we got up to pay the whole story had changed. It would be $50 for the plus size material, shipping and handling was about $40, and then taxes was another $20 on top of the base price of the dress! We asked why they had lied to us about the price of the dress and other costs. The ladies helping us blamed it on the designer of the dress and couldn’t help what they were charging for the dresses. We asked why they couldn’t have been honest with us up front instead of wasting not only our time but theirs as well. They never apologized for their mistake or made sure the dress would be under $200 in the beginning before telling us that. It was absolutely maddening, so we all decided to just go somewhere else and find a dress for my best friend’s wedding.

My third experience is happening as I type this. My cousin is getting married in May of this year and she has 7 bridesmaids that went here for their dresses as well. Bella knew that we were all on a tight schedule because my cousin decided to get married in less than a year. The dresses were being rush ordered and couldn’t afford to have any mistakes. We just got them back about 3 weeks ago and they’re all HUGE on us. Now I understand that they recommend ordering the dress bigger rather than smaller because you can always take it in but you can’t take it out. That’s like the golden rule, so yes some of us girls did order a bit bigger, however, the dresses are about 4 sizes too big though and it’s not even close to any of our actual sizes. The girl that took all our measurements apparently had no idea what she was doing. We are all going to the same seamstress and she said it’s going to take at least 3 weeks to get only 2 of the dresses taken in and sewn and that's not even including the hemming of all the dress. She has to make a completely NEW dress for my sister out of the left-over material because there's no way she can alter the dress she ordered to look exactly like the rest of ours, so that's going to take some time too. We all paid for rush shipping and extra material and now we have to pay hundreds of dollars for our seamstress to fix them. Tell me how that's right and acceptable? It is absolutely APPALLING that Bella doesn't care about their customers. I DO NOT...

The two ladies that helped the bride-to-be and the bridesmaids try on and find the right dresses were perfect! Made ALL of the bridesmaids feel beautiful! But once the dresses were paid for, the service went downhill. In fact, it was horrifying. I, the mother of the bride, went to pick up the wedding dress 3 days before the wedding. I waited for a while and then they came out with the dress all in a white plastic bag (not in a nice garment bag as they said it would be in). They help me get it in my truck, laid out nice so it wouldn't wrinkle. I get home, have help getting it to a place I can hang it up high and my friend asks if she can peek. Turns out they gave me THE WRONG DRESS!! Pure panic sets in and I call Bella to figure out how to fix this and fix it fast so my daughter doesn't see the wrong dress. It's 50 minutes to get to the shop (without bad traffic) so, after having me on hold for a long time, they decide to meet me halfway. I finally get the right dress (met in a parking lot of a gas station off the highway), get it home and check it over. It's wrinkled. I call and they tell me it's from transporting it from car to car and to the house. They tell me the owner herself steamed it. (I guess that means there's no possible way for there to be a problem with it.) And she proceeds to tell me how to steam it myself. (Not happening.) There was just too much going on for me to get back to Woodbury before the wedding so we had to just live with it. Turns out that they didn't steam the front top part properly either...the lace that should've been standing up flat and straight was still curled over, the way it was during alterations. We were promised it would lay right...one feature that she loved about the dress, especially for photos. It showed up in the photos as "not being steamed properly". Very disappointing and very sad.

You can definitely shop here but don't trust them with the steaming or any personal assistance after you pay for everything. And I highly recommend that you DEMAND a viewing of the dress before leaving the shop. I didn't uncover the dress until it was hanging at home because I was trying not to handle it any more than necessary. My mistake! But there was no reason for me to believe it wouldn't be perfect and ready for her to wear on her wedding day, not to mention to even imagine that it would be the wrong dress!! There is no excuse for them giving someone the wrong dress.

I hope the owner of the other dress that we got by mistake never finds out about this mishap. I just told my daughter about it--two weeks after the wedding. Still makes me sick to talk or...

Wedding time is a time of great excitement, fun and occasionally a dose of chaos too! Shopping for the perfect wedding dress was job #1! I brought my mom and MOH. I was so excited but also and a little out of my comfort zone! We put our trust in our consultant at Bella Bridal Boutique. I was surprised when I found my dream dress on our first trip here. I was between two sizes, not having much experience with bridal sizing I relied heavily on the expertise of the consultant. Even though the designer notes for the dress advised that when between sizes - I go up a size, the consultant explained to me that most brides will lose weight before the wedding and I should chose the smaller size. So I did. The dress is custom made to your height measurement so that was taken and off I went so pleases that I’d found THE dress.Then came the heartbreak & chaos!

The dress was too small (mind you body size never changed). Not just tight, but COMPLETELY the wrong size! In fact, the young employee that assisted me into the gown, accidentally ripped it not once, but twice, attempting to button it! We were then advised that we could purchase fabric to fix the tears at $40/yard. We were mortified!! The owner of the store then kindly told me that the dress in one size bigger would have been a perfect fit! I wish I was making this up! Heartbroken, frustrated and angry at this point - I took the dress to the car. Then my courage — and quest for making this RIGHT — kicked in and I re-entered the store. The owner refused to take the dress back, offered no advice or assistance in the resale of this completely useless dress other than letting their preferred seamstress try and salvage it. I was stunned and angry, i left the store to NEVER return!

I tell you our experience, as I’ve repeated it to sooo many others, to strongly advise you to please NEVER SHOP at this bridal shop. Nobody should ever have to deal with such unnecessary stress, strain and...