The first thing you notice inside Mandeville’s Olivier Couture Bridal Boutique is the color. A hush of pink, soft as dawn, It’s unapologetically feminine, perhaps because Jolie Goodreau, the owner, raised four sons at home.
“Pink,” she says, “was my rebellion, my one place to be girly.”
Her story begins not in couture but in classrooms. A special education teacher, Jolie spent her twenties writing IEPs, guiding children with exceptionalities through their first steps of learning. That patience, and its demand for empathy, threads her boutique today.
For ten years now, Jolie has been shaping bridal experiences that are as much about presence as they are about purchase.
She laughs at the memory of bridal seminars that promised foolproof closing techniques. “We’re actually terrible at sales,” she says, “and that’s the way I want it. This isn’t about a pitch; it’s about an experience.”
What Jolie offers brides is rare: an unpressured sanctuary where the most important garment of her life becomes a moment of revelation, not transaction.
“We’re Team Bride,” she says. “Always.”
That team mentality comes naturally for Jolie, the mother of four boys, each one a competitor— football, baseball, firefighting, even pole vaulting.
Her life was built on bleachers, juggling practice schedules and scraped knees. Jolie is thankful for the grit those years instilled, for the pressure, because it equipped her to remind nervous twenty-somethings in satin that weddings are not about the Instagram carousel, they’re ultimately about the marriage.
For Jolie, helping brides prepare for their weddings is about relationship. Brides shop a year in advance, return for fittings, text updates, schedule veil appointments and steaming. Jolie remembers their venues, their mothers’ names, and their stories. Months after, she runs into her clients on church pews or pushing strollers down Northshore sidewalks.
“We’re in each other’s lives for a year,” she says, “sometimes more. We become friends.”
Brides are not customers to Jolie; they are students of transformation, often discovering themselves in dresses they never imagined.
“They come in with lace in mind, walk out with satin ball gowns,” Jolie says. “They see themselves differently. That’s the moment.”
Veils are lowered, mothers cry, grandmothers gasp, best friends squeal, and Jolie, not a crier by nature, finds herself swept into the emotion of it all.
“It’s contagious,” she admits. And when it all comes together—the veil, the fit, the tears—Jolie swears even she feels it. “I never thought I’d be cheesy like that. But it really is a moment to remember.”
Much of Jolie’s legacy comes from her grandmother, a four-foot-eight Southern belle from Vicksburg who never once wore pants, not even to the beach. She was always in heels, always hosting Saturday luncheons on bone china at 10:30 sharp. Jolie is thankful for a grandmother’s etiquette that lingers still, stitched quietly into every seam of her boutique.
In many ways, every gown that leaves her shop carries forward a lineage of grace and Southern elegance woven into modern design.
Her grandmother’s etiquette shapes her as much as much as her faith roots her. It’s no accident that Jolie’s LLC bears the words of Ecclesiastes 4:12: a cord of three strands is not easily broken.
“The three cords are you, your future spouse, and the Lord,” she explains. “Patience and kindness and humility and humanity all go a long way. I hope people see that I love the Lord and that everything I do is based on that foundation.”
Jolie’s love of marriage reflects her own. Thirty-three years with her husband, she insists, have only deepened her affection.
“I can honestly say, without a shadow of a doubt, that I love him more now than I did in 1992. I can’t imagine not being married. I adore him.”
Fashion has a way of looping through time with old styles coming back into vogue. The Basque waist of Jolie’s own gown has returned; Chantilly lace flirts again; strapless, once forgotten, now chic. Trends cycle, but Olivier Couture remains steady.
Jolie is raising more than a family; she’s marshalling an army of brides, ushering each of them into what she calls the “second yes.”
The first yes belongs to the proposal, the second goes to the gown.
What, then, does Olivier Couture sell?
Not merely dresses, though they gleam in clean organza and shimmer with eyelash lace. What Jolie offers is a rare kind of centeredness. Brides leave not only with fabric but with a memory staged in kindness, patience, and candor.
In a culture obsessed with “the day,” Jolie whispers a different truth: the marriage matters more than the ceremony.
“This isn’t about one day. It’s about beginning a marriage.”
Perhaps that is why Olivier Couture has become Mandeville’s premiere bridal boutique.
At Olivier Couture, every fitting becomes rehearsal for a future. Dresses will fray, trends may cycle, photographs will fade. But the vow—the tether of three strands—is reason to be thankful, season after season.
Olivier Couture Bridal Boutique has been serving brides and bridesmaids since 2010 and was voted the Northshore’s Best Bridal Shop. Visit Olivier Couture Bridal online at oliviercouture.com, on Instagram @oliviercouturebridal, and in person at Chenier Shopping Center, 1901 Highway 190 #24 in Mandeville. To schedule an appointment, call the boutique at (985) 674-6994 or fill out the contact form online.
"I hope people see that I love the Lord and that everything I do is based on that."