Weddingbee Blog

The first store I went to on my magical dress journey was Saks. This was last spring, when I heard they were getting rid of the wedding departments at most of their stores, and I lunged at the chance for a sample designer gown. The DC area store was already sold out, so we ventured down to Richmond, Virginia.

I was allowed to pull whatever I wanted from the racks. All of the gowns were in bags so it was hell figuring out what was what and I will admit, I was looking for big name designers. I ended up with an Amsale, Carolina Herrera and who knows what else in my dressing room.

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The Amsale was pretty but it didn’t spark much in me. The Herrera I found by chance — it actually looked a little scary in the bag, but I noticed the grosgrain ribbons and decided to give it a chance.

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Oh. My. Lordy. It was ball gown-tastic. There is something about a giant Scarlet O’Hara skirt that just makes me die. I wanted the dress and I wanted it bad. However, once I found out the price my mood quickly changed to despair. It was a sample gown; it wasn’t in perfect condition and it was still $3,000? Spending a fifth of the wedding budget made me nauseous.

I lamented on the boards. I was looking for validation, a “it’s okay to spend that much on an imperfect but beautiful Herrera gown!” Instead I got a lead. A sleuthy Weddingbee reader had found the SAME dress listed on Craigslist. Apparently it had been bought at a Neiman sale and the seller wanted $1,000. WHAT.

I emailed the seller immediately. I started researching safe ways to make that sort of transaction. The girl sent me pictures of the dress and it looked flawless. Was this really happening? Was I getting the dress this easily, on basically my first try?

No, of course not! What kind of dress climax would that be?

The Craigslist seller became slow to reply and eventually admitted she wanted to keep the dress. I was heartbroken. But determined to find THE dress and completely bitten by the designer bug, I looked at my options.

Preownedweddingdresses.com

This became my addiction. Every day I’d check under Vera Wang, Carolina Herrera, and Oscar de la Renta for new gowns.

Oncewed.com

Another site with used gowns. I’d check it weekly.

A month or so passed of obsessively checking these sites and I needed even more options. I was opening up the field to vintage. Vintageous became another mainstay of my browsing at work, except the really fab dresses sold out lickety-split.

I was getting antsy. Nothing was crying out to me. So I considered the old standby: J. Crew.

Enter Fontaine. I think the style has been discontinued at this point, but I saw potential. With some great accessories and perhaps a monster head piece, this could be chic.

I went to the nearest J.Crew and asked about ordering it. They said they would have it shipped to the store so I could try it on and see if I liked it, no charge. (DC area brides: the Georgetown J.Crew now has all of the wedding gowns in their store!)

After about a week the dress had arrived. They called me and I swiftly left work that day to try it on. It wasn’t an OMG LOVE moment, but I kept rationalizing to myself how I could make it work. And the price was within my ideal budget of $1500. So I bought it.

please ignore the messy studio apartment!

Perhaps it was not the best decision.

What lengths did you go to find your dress? Did you try sample sales and the internet?