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Kate Bulow bought a used Disney Wedding Dress for $450 from a woman whose wedding had been called off. The style had cost $1,200 Wedding Dresses at one bridal shop.
Josie Daga's JanellDove Chocolate Wedding Berté gown, for which she paid $3,000 in Prom Dresses 1999, arrived home after the wedding, cleaned and preserved, in a three-foot-by-four-foot box. ;You can't fit it under the bed or in a closet, and I thought the reality of my daughter ever wanting to wear my dress is pretty slim,; says Ms. Daga, who is 38.
She listed the dress in 2004 on Craigslist, where she wedding gownsreceived a few $200 bids and a lot of offers that she suspected were scams. Flower Girl Dresses On EBay, ditto. In consignment shops, nada. So she did what an enterprising young advertising executive does -- she Bridesmaid Dresses launched a Web site www.weddingnova.com/, and sold her dress for $800. A year Wedding Dresses later, she had 400 listings, with each seller paying a minimum $25 fee, and soon afterward, running the Web site became her full-time occupation. Today, PreOwnedWeddingDresses.com has about 2,360 gowns listed.
Boosting its business these days are brides on a budget. There are 2.2 million weddings each year in the U.S., according to Brides Magazine. While their cost on average in recessionary Bridesmaid Dresses 2008 was a still-high $22,000, that was down roughly 20% from 2007. Disc Wedding Dresses jockeys, photographers wedding dresses and videographers are being hit hard as brides opt for iPods and friends with cameras.
Emotionally, it can be hard to downsize a wedding-dress dream. Some women justify the purchase of an expensive Wedding Accessories gown by planning to resell it. Sally Lorensen Conant, owner of Orange Prom Dresses Restoration Labs in Orange, Conn., says fewer brides want to have their gowns preserved these days. I'm seeing more women who say, 'I Bridesmaid Dresses just want you to clean the dress. I'm going to try to sell it,' she says.
It's a risky maneuver. A gown isn't a financial Wedding Roles investment. It can take months or even a year to sell a gown, Lawn Weddingand the returns are comparable to those of selling a used car. Transaction details must be negotiated. That includes not only payment but, if the dress isn't being mailed, where to meet and try Wedding Partyon the dress. One seller Top Barriers For Groom I interviewed arranged to meet a potential Expensive Wedding Dress buyer at her dry cleaner, which felt safer than inviting a stranger into her home.
But when a deal is done, it can feel, for seller and Evening Dresses buyer alike, like serendipity. Jennifer Ramsey tore a photo of a Tomasina gown from a magazine when she was 19 and kept the magazine page until she became engaged 18 years later. The dress, miraculously, was still being manufactured, Global Wedding but at $8,000, it was priced too high for her budget. I thought Fashion Wedding was the most stunning dress I'd ever seen, she says. So I Lawn Wedding googled Tomasina and the style code.
Suzanne Fargo's listing for the Tomasina dress was halfway down the Google Wedding Flowers page that led to PreOwnedWeddingDresses.com, and the dress came with a matching bolero jacket, two veils and a Wedding Dresses tiara. When Ms. Fargo, a 41-year-old retail manager in Orange County, Calif., got married in 2001, I thought some Flower Girl Dresses day my daughter might want to wear it, she says. Now divorced, with no daughter, she says, I want to simplify my life.
Ms. Ramsey and her mother flew to California from her home in Jacksonville, Fla., to see the dress. When they cracked open the sealed box, they discovered Ms. Fargo's forgotten custom Prom Dresses Jimmy Choo shoes and a handbag. Ms.Bridesmaid Dresses Fargo threw them in, too. Ms. Ramsey, who is getting married in Wedding Dresses September, says she paid $3,200 for a dream come true.
I've kept my dress so long because a friend Wedding Giftsonce told me I should save it for my daughter. At seven, Saskia is enthusiastic about the dress, but I suspect that by the time she marries -- if she does -- she'll have less-sentimental ideas.
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