Buying a second-hand wedding dress

One of the most exciting, but also potentially most stressful elements of planning your wedding is choosing The Dress. The range of wedding dresses available is endless, then you have the possibility of a bespoke dress. Wedding dress shops have a monopoly, and they are also very expensive places to shop! The problem being that they are the first place most brides-to-be go to look.

While it may seem unlikely, you can save a fair whack by clever wedding dress shopping, it may take you a while to get out of the mindset of “second hand?? my wedding dress?? I think not!”stop for a minute and look at the facts, this isn’t second hand in the thrift store sense, it isn’t something that is being given away because it’s owner has got fed up of wearing it or the elbows have worn a bit thin, it’s been worn for one day only. The savings you can make buying used wedding dresses are phenomenal, and more and more people are catching on to the fact that there really isn’t much point having their wedding dress sitting up in the attic gathering dust when it could in fact make up to half its original value back. Most pre-owned wedding dresses will have been dry cleaned by a specialist and wrapped carefully to protect it from the attic dust, and if you are really lucky and find you have the same size feet as the person you are buying from you might bag some low cost wedding shoes as well. If you really can’t bear the thought of a second hand wedding dress, then what about the bridesmaids dresses? Again, you will find people who have a beautiful set of bridesmaid dresses, cleaned and gathering dust, sometimes even with matching ,cheap wedding accessories, who are willing to sell them on for a fraction of the price.

Of course, buying a pre-loved wedding dress means it won’t have been tailor made to fit you, which may put you off buying one, however you must remember that wedding dress alteration specialists are just that, specialists in their field and the fact is they are the people that would make the adjustments to any new dress that you bought - you will still save yourself a wonderful amount of money buying a second-hand dress and paying a little extra to have it made to fit just right.