I recently had the opportunity to go to a fancy wedding boutique and try on some amazing dresses. While the experience was spectacular and having found (as of right now) “the dress”, the price tag was a bit of a shocker… a $9000.00 shocker! Being on a tight budget, $9000.00 is just not doable. Now, I have read on several blogs, websites, etc that it is pretty much a bad idea to go try on dresses that are out of your budget, so I mentally prepared myself. I will say that once that perfect wedding dress is on it is really hard to go back and to not think about it day in and day out. So I decided to head to the internet with the thought “I must be able to find my dream dress at a lower cost”.

Google here I come.

Conducting a search for the dress name and style, that I tried on at the boutique, didn’t really yield what I was looking for, but I did stumble upon a site called www.preownedweddingdresses.com. What a great site! It is a site where brides and bridal stores can buy and sell their lightly used wedding gowns and samples.

• Several search options (by designer, size, style, etc.)
• You can save dresses that you are interested in purchasing to your favorites
• You can sign up as a seller. Once the big day is over and you don’t need your dress anymore, it gives you a chance to recuperate some of the cost.
• Bridal accessories are also available to buy and sell
• The site also has many tips bout buying and selling, sizing, and general tips

Many of the dresses are about 50-65% off the original price! I even found my dream dress on there for only $3100, which unfortunately is still out of my budget, but as you can see there is light at the end of the tunnel. Even though the dress is currently out of my budget I did decide to at least contact the seller and they were very willing to negotiate the price. (Cross your fingers for me!!)

Below are a few more sites that may help with your dress hunt and feel free to suggest anymore that you may find out there.
http://www.recycledbride.com/
http://www.oncewed.com/

Stay tuned for another post with resources about finding your venue and tracking your options using online tools.