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Wedding Costs and more importantly THE dress

SecondGeneration's picture

Our wedding date is creeping closer; 5 months now, so many things are all arranged, paid for, all done and just waiting for the date to arrive. We have even dealt with the things that we forgot about in our original budget.

BUT theres one item that is being rather difficult to pin down, THE dress, I had found a dress I liked the look of online and found a very similar style in a boutique so went in to try it on. Discovered that dress is really not right for me, really doesnt compliment me what so ever!

Ofcourse the dress lady pulled out a variety of different styles and was soon on a style line that was alot more flattering for me. Im an hourglass frame, carrying a few extra pounds Id rather get rid of but was shocked to find that large breasts can look so awful in certain dresses.

Anyway, long story short we found a beautiful, stunning, designer, really freaking expensive dress. Everything about it (other than the price) is great. But with it being over $4000 its WAY out of price range.

Since then we have been searching for a more reasonable alternative, or even a cheaper copy but have been without luck.

My fiance is now debating whether we should leave the dress till the last minute and try to save the extra, but Im not convinced we will be able to save an extra $2500 on top of the outstanding costs.

I know alot of you are from the USA and the original dress I had seen was online from an american wedding dress shop, so I have a couple of questions.

1. Have any of you bought wedding dress or special occassion dresses online? Without having a backup.

2. What are your favourite/recommended websites?

Comments

bwench's picture

Have you thought about finding someone to make a similar dress for you in a similar style... this often can be cheaper and more flattering.

SecondGeneration's picture

No I havent, Id assumed having someone make one who be more costly.

BethAnne's picture

this is what I did, though my MIL made mine for me. It might be worth getting some quotes about how much it is going to cost. My dress cost about $600 in materials plus be bought MIL a nice gift (she is bad with cash). I know that it would be a lot more for a seamstress to do it for you, but it might be worth checking out exactly how much if your heart is set on the other one.

Tuff Noogies's picture

i bought from david's bridal both times. the first one was in-store, tried on for $400.00. no alterations needed except a friend took up some length in the front

the dress i got for our 1-yr anniversary ceremony was one i ordered online from them, for $140.00. it was perfect, didnt have to change a single thing. it is so pretty, and so "me".

BethAnne's picture

There can be a lot of emphasis on the wedding and not the marriage, but the size of someone's wedding budget doesn't have anything to do with the quality of their relationship. Just because your budget would be smaller doesn't mean that someone else can't spend more if they want to and still have a great relationship to follow the wedding.

When I got married it was my husband's 3rd wedding and it had by far the biggest budget. It is now his longest lasting marriage and the most fulfilling and happy marriage that he has been. I'm pretty happy too.

WalkOnBy's picture

When I married DH, I was wearing a strapless cotton eyelet sundress that I found on the clearance rack at J.Crew for about $12.

I wore a purple cardigan sweater on top of it that I got at target for $15.

My shoes came from DSW-they were the most expensive item I had on that day aside from my ring. They were purple velvet. I think they were 35 or $40.

SecondGeneration's picture

Oh dont worry about our wedding budget, we are eloping and having our wedding day/honeymoon combined. Thats why the price of the dress is such a big deal, we are looking at $4k as total cost without the wedding dress, we do not want to be doubling the price of our wedding day for a single item.

As beautiful as the dress is, it will only be worn the once and I just cant bring myself to feel ok about wasting that amount of money on a single item of clothing.

We havent actually been dress shopping in person since we found this dress, because the majority of the time we are finding things in a similar price range. But I have been looking more online.

I will have a look at how much it would cost me to have a dress made though,