I am a very upset 9 months pregnant bride to be and I would not recommend anybody to visit this shop and have to endure the rudeness of the owner and her equally rude seamstress!
I went to La Belle Angele to look at their wide selection of bridesmaid dresses and after finding my dream dresses I ordered 5 of them totalling almost £1000 including the extra lengths which of course they charge extra for! The shop girls took the measurements and told me which sizes I needed so taking their expert advice I paid half up front for the deposit. So far the service seemed excellent. That was until we came back to try on the dresses, one of the dresses was too big , I'm not talking a nip in too big, but hanging like a curtain too big! So my bridesmaid tried on one of the other girls dresses which was a size smaller and it fit perfectly. So the clear solution you would have thought would be send it back and get a size smaller........instead the owner came in like a scatty whirlwind grabbing the tape measure checking the dress and the girl and trying to explain why it didn't fit and what needed to be altered in a completely rude and patronising manner and said that I would be charged for this! She then told me to leave and she would ring me once she found out why it didn't fit. She called a few days later and said they needed to lift the shoulder and that was why, so we went back AGAIN! Again the dress clearly didn't fit. At this point I was getting very upset as she would not budge and insisted it was no fault of theirs. She was rude, constantly interrupted and spoke to my wedding party with complete disrespect. How she runs a business I do not know! I explained I had come to this shop for a personalised and tailored service and if I wanted to simply take sizes off the shelf and try them to see what would fit I could have done that in a department store , to which the seamstress replied 'why didn't you then?'. After joining in the argument herself the seamstress then decided to storm off. When my nan in law to be ' who has been making dresses for about 50 years!' Tried to discuss the issue the owner said to me (whilst looking my nan in law up and down like something off her shoe!) 'who is this woman? What relation is she to you? It's your account I will only discuss it with you.' At this point of complete rudeness I left the shop to speak to my fiancé . I decided I had no choice but to make the decision to pay the remaining bill rather than risk losing my deposit and take my dresses from the shop. I left the shop at 9 months pregnant completely stressed out and in floods of tears and now have 5 dresses which will all need alterations incurring even more cost to me! To add insult to injury when I went to pay the balance and take the dresses the owner would not even come downstairs instead got a shop girl who had only worked there a fortnight to deal with us.
28-02-14
