La Belle Mariee Bridal — Local services in Middletown Township

To start, I already knew what dress I wanted to try on when coming into the store, so I can’t comment on how well the stylist picked dresses out or anything. I said yes to the dress after trying it on.

The dress came in 6 mths later & it was perfect. A little large on the top, but I knew that going in since I didn’t do custom sizing. The shop gave me pricing for alterations should I choose to go with them & I even signed a contract.

Fast forward a few months & I hadn’t heard from the shop about scheduling a fitting. I reached out & had to schedule a few weeks out because the next few weeks were booked. I was a bit nervous w/how close it was to my wedding, but said fine. They sent me an email confirming the time & pricing, great. Then, the Sunday night before my Tuesday appt, they send me a text w/pricing, but this time, much higher. I texted back asking to confirm the pricing. Monday goes by, nothing, then Tuesday comes & I receive a text saying.. we raised our pricing recently. I signed a contract w/ them, plus 2 weeks ago they sent me the rates again by email, now, right before my appt you “raise the rates”. At this point, it was so close to the wedding, I had no choice BUT to go w/ them. Extremely unprofessional to raise rates for a customer that you already quoted & actually illegal since I signed a contract.

Now this is when the nightmare starts. I go into my appt specifically to find out what the price will be, & Emily goes ahead & starts cutting the threading between the layers, & pinning this, clipping that. At the end of it all, I felt really pressured to get the alterations there, plus, now I had almost no options for other places. So, I decide to use their seamstress.

Next time I come in the dress is just so awfully pulled in, it’s making skin flow over & burning under my armpits, my skin around my shoulders & back were bright red from how tight it was. Instead of being listened to of how uncomfortable it was or how I didn’t think it was flattering, I was told to, use Benadryl lotion on my skin to numb the areas, use the strongest tape I can find to tape down my armpit skin and to rub a candle on the inside of the dress to help ease the pain.

I come in for my next appt & the dress is worse. At this point there is nothing to be done to reverse how awful the initial alterations were. I went home & cried for nearly 2 days, I absolutely HATED what they did to my beautiful dress. I emailed the shop about my feelings & they squeezed me in for an emergency appointment.

This time, the owner was there & thank gosh because none of the workers or Emily were listening to me. The back of the dress looked TERRIBLE & was so painful. So, I made the difficult decision to have Emily cut off the straps, & restructure the entire back, just so I could feel some relief from the pain. The owner was very supportive & helped get the point across.

Fast forward to the next appt, I am now less than a week out from my wedding, I put on the dress, but it was now WAYY too tight again - tighter than it was the last time. This was not what we agreed on. To solve this issue Emily said repeatedly, just have someone stick their fingers in the back of my dress & slide out to flatten my skin throughout the night… I’m sorry, I have to have someone “flattening out” my skin the entire night?? The workers proceeded to tell me that they’ve seen tighter dresses.. I’m paying a lot of money to get this dress altered at their shop. Alterations are to get the dress altered to fit YOU, not for you to then have to alter yourself to fit the dress after they ruin it.

I completely broke down at this point, I spent thousands of dollars on a dress at their shop & even more money for alterations & I absolutely hated the dress after what they had done to it. When I brought the dress home just 3 days before my wedding, I noticed Emily never connected the layers back & the bottom of the tulle was so jaggedly cut along the entire bottom.

Please, if you are purchasing a dress from this shop, PLEASE consider getting your alterations done...

Our wedding planning all went very smoothly, with the exception of everything that surrounded my wedding dress.

The staff at La Belle were pleasent and accommodating for the most part, but there were so many issues that came up along the way. Due to the number of problems that came up through the process, I am leaving a one star review.

I had a great experience day one when saying yes to the dress and I ordered a veil to go with it. When I returned the second time to try on my dress and veil once they arrived to the store, the veil I was given was not the one that I initially said “yes” to. The store claimed it was the same veil I tried on previously and attributed the different appearance to the company who creates the veils, saying they must have changed their tulle in production. The veil on the right picture is what I said yes to at my first appointment, the veil on the left picture is what I received. It felt as if the store accidentally ordered the wrong veil but instead blamed it on the company that produced the veil. This entire process was very frustrating, but fortunately they ended up giving me the veil I wanted in the first place.

Throughout the alteration process, I would walk down the open area of the store to see how the dress felt with movement and look at it in different mirrors. During my second fitting after it was hemmed, I walked in it to see how it felt. When I went to take it off at the end of the fitting, I noticed black stains around the bottom of the train and bottom of the dress. The owner claims they sweep and vacuum every night and the seamstress claimed that those stains were not there once she finished hemming the dress. I’m not sure who is at fault, however, I was not pleased with how dirty it got.

I ordered a strapless wedding dress. When I was at my second fitting, the dress was still a little loose so it was taken in again so that it would not be falling down as much during the night. When I received it, it was very tight so much that I had excess skin falling over the sides and back. I reached out to La Belle hoping they could take it out slightly so it wasn’t creating excess skin folds. When I reached out to them with my concerns, they attributed it to “iPhone photos” and said - “Unfortunately I feel like iphone pictures tend to not be the most flattering (I've had to come to this conclusion many times😂) so with that being said, I always tell my brides to not fixate too heavily on the pictures taken during their appointments”. I can confirm it was not just “iPhone photos” as my skin is still overflowing out of the dress in professional photos. They did not take the dress out, saying “Because we are three days away from your big day, there's unfortunately nothing Emily can do.”

I was always under the impression that the dress should be made to fit the bride, not the other way around.

I was fortunate to change in to a different dress purchased elsewhere on my wedding day, one that i felt more comfortable in. I never want to leave a negative review, but I unfortunately had an awful experience with La...

I said “yes!” to my dress today after trying on my dress a few days ago and needing to sleep on it to be sure. But I’m certain I wouldn’t have gotten to this point if it weren’t for Rachel.

Rachel was kind, patient, attentive… I came to try on dresses with my mom, my aunt, and a limited vision of what I was looking for, and Rachel made the process calm and easy. She gave us space to explore options, she pulled some herself based on the small amount of guidance I could give, and we collected a good handful of options to try on. With each dress, we learned what we liked and didn’t like, and Rachel helped guide the conversation in an incredibly helpful way, helped us consider things we hadn’t thought of (where the dress will lay when it’s my size, veil options, etc.), and she helped us feel like we had the space to really sit and think about what we were looking for.

When I finally tried on what would end up being the dress I said yes to, she walked me to different spots in the store to see it in new lighting, she let me try on different veils… I wore that dress for about 20 minutes while really thinking it over! At no point did Rachel make me feel pressured; instead she helped talk me through what was going on in my mind, and inevitably I knew this was my dress!!!

After sleeping on it and scheduling a new appointment, we tried the dress on again today, felt even more confident in our decision, celebrated with champagne, and took measurements. Rachel was thorough and careful in taking measurements and providing us with next steps.

I would HIGHLY recommend La Belle Mariee - the dressing room areas were private and beautiful, the selection of dresses is vast, and most especially, Rachel was so wonderful as was everyone else we briefly spoke to.

Thank you LBM and Rachel for making this incredibly tough...