Attire & Accessories Forum

Your experiences selling your wedding dresses?

What have been your experiences selling your wedding dresses after wearing them on the big day?  Do people show a lot of interest?  How much of the costs are you able to recoup?

Today I found this beautiful Melissa Sweet dress that made me cry, it just looked so perfect.  However, it's out of my budget.  With the veil and accessories, it would be $5,000.  I was originally going to get a dress around $1,500 in total.  However, I'm wondering if I could recoup 50% of the costs by selling it afterwards on eBay, Craigslist, or any specialty wedding dress sites.  What do you think?

Thanks!

Re: Your experiences selling your wedding dresses?

  • Dresses are sort of like new cars.  The moment you drive a new car off of the lot, it loses value.  Same with a dress.  The moment you walk out of the store, it begins to lose it's (overpriced) value.  Since the dress you're interested in buying is a coveted name brand dress, you might be able to recoup 50%...but that's a big might.  Not to mention, wedding dress styles change so frequently it's hard to say if there'd be a lot of demand for the particular dress you're looking at purchasing now but won't wear until 2011.  The odds are that styles will have completely changed. 

    Personally, I think you have some time to wait to purchase a dress and with your wedding so far out, the odds are fairly high that you'll fall in love with a dress today and then fall in love with another one six months later.  Places like theknot constantly bombard you with "hot new dresses" or "our 50 favorite dresses" and they create a sense of urgency that, frankly, doesn't really exist.  Also, bridal salons rush you into these things too, telling you it can take 6-8 months for dresses to come in.  It NEVER takes that long.  You've got time.

    If you're really in love with the dress though and want to buy it, check out preownedweddingdresses.com and oncewed.com.  The dress you want might already be on there and might already be 50% off.  Or, you might find another dress in your price range.  Happy dress hunting!


  • Ditto jessicarabbit 100%.

    Take a look at some of the used wedding dress sites like oncewed and preownedweddingdresses.com. They usually advise you to discount at LEAST 50% off the retail value for a used dress, and if you get any stains, rips or tears on the dress, your price should be even lower to reflect that.

    Personally, I wouldn't buy the dress if I couldn't afford it. If you can't find some other way to make it work for your budget and absolutely NEED the money from selling it - you're effectively starting off your marriage thousands of dollars in debt. For a DRESS. You'll be all paranoid on your wedding day trying not to damage your dress. And what if you get so attached to your dress that you don't want to sell it?
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