I'm really surprised at all of the negative reviews for this bridal store because our group had a great experience.
My bestie came here a week prior and had found two dresses she really liked. She also took a quick glance at the bridesmaid dresses and thought it would be a good place to look, so she made three appointments for the day: her mom, herself, and the bridesmaid group. First up was her mom, so while she did her thing, the other bridesmaids and I perused the rack of bridesmaid dresses. We had liked a dress we saw at a store in Chicago, and heard that this place carried that brand. However, we could not find it, mainly because, as other reviews stated, they cut the tags off so you can't see who the designer is. I have no idea why they do this. Maybe they don't want you comparing prices between stores?
The bride and one of the bridesmaids went to a store the day before to look at bridesmaid dresses and found two they really liked and heard Amelishan had them as well. Luckily, the other store gave them the designer info and website so they could look at them online, so we were all able to see what the dresses looked like and easily found them on the racks. Since our appointment wasn't for a few hours, we grabbed the two dresses, plus two other possibilities, and set them aside on the rack so we could get them later. It was very busy while we were there, and consultants were going back and forth, but not once were we told to get out of the way or that we couldn't look at the rack if it wasn't time yet, so that was appreciated.
Next up was the bride's turn to try on her dresses. We went toward the back of the store and sat and watched as she modeled the dress. The consultant worked with her for about an hour on belts and accessories. She was great about showing us all the different options and let us take as many pictures as we wanted.
She finally said yes to the dress, so while she was getting measured and doing the paperwork, someone in our group suggested that we skip lunch and just keep going and do our dresses next. We were hungry, but we agreed to do that and the consultant said that was fine. She said she would be right with us to get a room. We waited about half hour before we decided to just try on the dresses without her. Yeah, we went rogue but we kinda wanted to get out of there. We had four bridesmaids and four dresses already picked out, so we just put them on. When the bride came back to get us, we already had them on so we kinda just did our appointment in the bridal area. Oops?
We knocked out two dresses right away and were deciding between two. We picked one and then had to decide on color, which is a little hard when you don't know if a color you liked on a rack will come in this dress since you don't know the designer. I guess since we picked the dress, we were able to see the color swatches. We picked a color and then got measured.
The process to get rung up and get out of there took for-ev-er. We understood that they were being thorough, but we were so hungry and just wanted to leave. In the time it took to ring up four bridesmaids, the bride's mom was able to take another look at dresses, find one she liked, get accessories, and say yes to her dress. It was nice that they let her do all of this even though it had been a couple hours since her appointment time. I think we kinda took over the store in that way but hey, no one said anything.
The consultant read us our measurements and showed us where we fell in terms of size. We were all in between sizes so it was up to us to pick whether we wanted to go higher or lower. She then entered it in and then went through each point in the contract. Yeesh. The nice thing is that you can pay half when you order it and then pay the other half when you come to pick it up, so you're not dropping your whole paycheck at once. Finally we got out of there and everyone had a dress. Hooray!
Other pros: the dresses were reasonably priced. Sure our dresses were a bit much for my price range, but they did knock off $30 since the bride got her dress there, so that was nice. She got her dress for a steal. I also saw other bridal gowns that were on the lower price end too, so if you have a smaller budget, you do have a chance of finding something. There was a guy passing out chocolates so props for that.
A few cons: We were really dehydrated by the end of the day and no one offered us water, yet I saw other people with little water bottles. We had to go ask for it before we got anything. They have prom dresses, but damn are they pricey. And ugly. But that's the style nowadays I guess so that's not really their fault. Other than that, we had a great experience and everyone was pretty patient with us. Hope everything goes well with the ordering! read more