Shopping for a wedding dress should in itself be a happy and memorable experience and that's what Maddie Fox and Stephan Lentine hope to create for their customers in their new shop in Le Roy, the House of Bridal.
At the end of the Oatka Festival Parade on Saturday, the Chamber of Commerce joined Fox, Lentine, along with friends and family for a ribbon cutting out side the store at 19 Main St.
"We are catering really to the bride that's looking for an experience when she comes shopping for her wedding dress," Fox said. "She doesn't want to just be a number. She wants to be treated respectfully and have a moment with her family and receive genuine guidance along the way."
Fox and Lentine have been best friends since third grade and they always dreamed of going into fashion and owning a store together. The dream started to become a reality when they saw a need for a special kind of bridal shop in Genesee County.
"We love it," Fox said. "It's such a magical moment in people's lives."
They can deliver on the promise of a great bridal experience, Fox said, because they know wedding dresses.
"Like I said, we're not going to just tell a bride like 'oh, here's a dress,'" Fox said. "We're going to explain the dress to them -- the carriage practice, the characteristics of the dress, all the little things that they don't know because it's a learning experience when you're shopping for it."
Fox and Lentine designed a store that is both cozy and romantic to enhance the experience of shopping for a dress, and Fox thinks that what will really make the shopping experience is that Fox and Lentine can guide the brides-to-be in ways bigger stores can't.
"A lot of brides are very confused and they're not really sure which way to go, so I think our knowledge based on our experience is really huge," Fox said.
For more information about the store and store hours, visit the shop's website.
Top photo: Maddie Fox, left, and Stephanie Lentine. Photos by Howard Owens
