“The magic fades too fast..the scent of summer never lasts...the nights turn hollow and vast but nothing remains...nothing lasts.”, says Sanober Khan, author of Turquoise Silence. And we couldn’t agree more when it came to weddings and wedding dresses!
You wouldn’t want to leave your dream dress marinating in a pool of dark after the “I do’s” have been said and all of the festivities have come to a close, would you? Once shining like a north star, your wedding dress doesn’t deserve that! No doubt, the dress gave you golden moments, but it’s not gold which will not lose its value with time. Nothing remains new forever. The hard-hearted time dust makes sure nothing remains untouched by its particles and everything in the world gets its fair share of the limelight. Let’s not forget the thought, time, and money that you splurged on it. Let’s not wrap it up and forget it after living the most unforgettable day donning it. Let’s tell the world that you love your wedding dress but not more than the planet where you live. Let’s let your piggy bank put on some more weight by selling your wedding dress. Let’s spread happiness by donating your wedding dress. Let’s tell the other soon-to-be brides that their dream wedding dress is hiding in your closet. Let’s figure out how you can put your beloved wedding gown back on a road to happiness and contentment for other brides! Let’s pick your favorite option out of dozens of things to do with your wedding dress after the broom has been jumped over to sweep away the old to make way for a new beginning.
Perpetuating the wedding dress is the best alternative if you are a bride who can’t stand parting with her expensive designer wedding dress and want to preserve it for sentimental value or to pass it on to her daughter. However, before you decide to turn the wedding dress into a family heirloom, you must know that the cost of wedding dress preservation can go up to $1,000 depending on the service provider you choose, but it can be well worth it. For instance, any quality wedding gown preservation service provider next door can charge you anywhere between $200-$400 and if you buy wedding dress preservation from a high-end boutique in New York City it can even exceed $1,000. You would not want to burn the hole in your pocket by paying that high of a price to these boutiques that most likely outsource the preservation to a 3rd party. You can understand why they are asking for a king’s ransom to preserve your wedding dress.
Also, you would not want to skimp on perpetuating the wedding dress by approaching bargain-basement wedding gown preservations that you can find around the big-box wedding stores. They might charge you for the service as low as $99 as they don’t specialize in preserving wedding gowns. You need to be extra cautious with these service providers if the wedding dress you’re preserving is not a bargain basement and future yellowing is the last thing you want to happen with your crisp white bridal dress. Dry cleaning and preserving are NOT the same things. There are also services provided by places like David’s Bridal. Make sure you select a dress preservation specialist to preserve your wedding dress. They clean and preserve it, then deliver it back to you. New York City’s Traditional Wedding Gown Preservation Kit’s preservation charges start at $225 plus other online services can charge upwards of $425 if a couple of accessories are included to be preserved. All their packages, besides clean-only, include up to 5 accessories at no additional cost.
Not everyone can afford professional wedding dress preservation, so for those DIY brides we have a pro tip here- Go through the special instructions mentioned on the label if you choose to clean the wedding dress at home. Better you first do the spot test on a small, hidden part of the gown to be sure that the cleaning agents are fabric-friendly and use a washing brush with super soft bristles. Don’t forget to put on the white cotton gloves to avoid any oils from your skin soaking into the fabric while keeping it in storage after cleaning. Store your gown in a weather-proof location and to keep it from any potential damage caused by moisture or harsh light and/or temperatures we recommend using acid-free tissue paper in your storage box.
Whether you hung the cost on your wedding ceremony/reception and blew your wedding budget to impress the loved ones and are looking to regain even a small bit of the cost or want little extra funds to make your honeymoon unforgettable, or you want to pay back the loved one for buying you the pricey dress kind deed forward, or just need to make more space in your closet, selling the wedding dress is the best and obvious choice! The wedding dress after the wedding bells has rung is no less than a souvenir from the red-letter day of one’s life. We can’t deny the fact that wedding dresses nowadays are insanely expensive if bought fresh from the rack of big-box wedding stores! Thanks to the second-hand wedding dress dealers (buyers/sellers) like Borrowing Magnolia (BMag), you can recoup some of the money you splurged by selling your wedding dress while doing your bit towards saving the planet from an additional carbon footprint and waste caused by producing one more wedding dress to impress. Even if you have no time to step out to the thrift store nearby to sell your wedding gown you still can sell the wedding dress by listing it online at a nominal fee (or no fee at all) from the comfort of your couch. You will nowadays find a plethora of used wedding dress selling websites like preownedweddingdresses.com, oncewed.com, tradesy.com to name a few that allow brides to sell used wedding gowns. You might chance upon some great deals as well there if you list it at the right time. Click here for some tips to sell the used wedding dress. Modern brides are more practical and do not hesitate to buy pre-loved wedding dresses for themselves and their bridal party including their mother. David's Bridal designer wedding dress, Oleg Cassini designer dress, fit-to-flare Hailey Paige bridal dress, or just a modest regular A-line wedding dress, there's a huge demand for all types of second-hand wedding dresses.
Firstly, before you type on Google “I want to sell my wedding dress” make sure it’s in great condition if not then tell the prospective buyer about the stains or other discrepancies in the description section while listing the wedding dress online for resale while justifying the price you have put on it. Maybe little wear and tear could be fixed with a little alteration and that strikes the right chord with the to-be brides. Secondly, sell your wedding dress and accessories like a wedding veil as soon as possible! Insider tip: list it 1-2 weeks before your wedding day if you wish to sell it as quick as lightning. Lastly, research a lot- for selling the wedding dress online, choose a website that specifically deals in pre-owned wedding dresses like www.borrowingmagnolia.com/ and www.nearlynewlywed.com/ over the large and leading online marketplaces like eBay and Craigslist that might allure you more. Not only a popular second-hand wedding dress resale website could sell it faster than these big-box wedding websites but also can probably offer you a better deal and more user-friendly service for this very niche and essential wedding day purchase.
You might have upcycled and repurposed so many things that you thought were of no use to you but when it comes to wedding dress you think a million times before doing the same with it. There are actually tons of things you can do with your wedding gown and this is the best way you could keep your wedding dress with you forever and a day in a more useful or compact way. You may or may not require more fabric while you are doing your wedding dress repurpose project but this is all worth it! Imagine if you could see that pretty gown every day! Here are a few interesting ways you could upcycle your wedding dress into a cherished keepsake or gift. From turning it on your own or having it turned professionally into a christening outfit for your future child to covering your wedding album in fabric from your dress and adding embellishments plus trimming to it, the sky’s the limit as you put on your creative hat. You could also up the upcycled factor by crafting a baby blanket, quilt & matching throw pillows, tot bag, teddy bear, keepsake jewelry or ornaments, lingerie pieces, scarf, Halloween costume, Christmas tree skirt, face mask, purse or clutch, wall art, and whatnot out of your wedding dress. Some brides even frame their entire wedding dress and put the large work of art on display. Getting your wedding dress professionally framed can burn a hole in your pocket, but there is a cartload of easy-breezy DIY options as well. There are brides who love to wear their wedding gowns after turning them into simpler wedding dresses like a cocktail dress or an evening gown. Just a fabric dye, some cuts and styling, and bingo! There you are- ready for the date night with your sweetheart! Here’s one more wedding dress upcycle idea you would fall for-
From the BMag’s chest of tips: Utilize the leftover fabric to craft a pretty dress for your teddy bear too. Your flower girl or ring bearer would love this keepsake from your special day and love you more!
If the idea of wedding dress resale or wedding dress transformation or even wedding dress preservation doesn’t appeal to you then you definitely belong to the clan of brides who distribute happiness for nothing but tons of best wishes, love, self-contentment, and second-hand emotions in return. A designer wedding dress or a regular stunner, the actual job of a wedding dress is to walk a bride to her happily ever after with her soulmate. And once its job is over, the best way to put it to great use is letting it sway one more time for a bride with similar dreams. Your wedding dress donation can help someone in need, while also giving your dormant dress a new life. Psst… the ultimate sign of solidarity, donations are tax-deductible also. All the more reason why you should donate your wedding dress. There are plenty of organizations or charities nationwide, you may donate the wedding dress. Besides a thrift store, charity shop, local Goodwill, or Salvation Army, you may donate your wedding dress to places that make the most out of your donated dress to help needy families such as Adorned in Grace, Angel Gowns, Forever Angels of Virginia, Unchained, Brides Across America, Brides Against Breast Cancer, and Brides for a Cause to name a few. Your generous choice to donate your bridalwear to an incredible cause not only saves you from additional costs and hassles involved in repurposing or preserving the dress but also allows you to get rid of the guilt of sticking your wedding dress in the back of a closet and forgetting about it! Remember- “The measure of life is not duration but its donation!”
If you ask us to put in our two cents, the lightest, cheapest, and the best way to make a bridal dress last a lifetime is in the form of pictures. Rest depends on your mindset and financial needs. If you need some hard cash in the near future you should put the wedding dress for sale online. If you don’t then better you gift it to someone who needs it. If you can’t spare time or money for the DIY dress upcycle project and are not confident that you can transform your wedding dress into something that you or your loved one (who you give it to as a keepsake) won’t hesitate to use it over and over again then only get into DIY mode. If framing the dress sounds stupid to you and a trash-the-dress photoshoot is not your thing. Then wedding dress donation is the best thing you could do to your expensive designer wedding dress. Any which way, you have made thousands of keepsakes of your ‘one and only’ most valuable dress already that’s holed up in the folds of your wedding album/s.
Maybe you are still on the fence about keeping your wedding dress or not. But think along the lines of what you have in your heart for the wedding dress! It’s not easy to separate from you something as adorable as a wedding day dress! It was just a beautiful piece of clothing when you bought it from the store but not anymore after you donned it on the happiest day of your life. The dress is now part fabric, part memories from the most beautiful day of your life! And memories are precious. Way more than the dress itself! If not traditionally keeping it in your bed box to never take a peek at in years, you would want to keep it close to your heart in any form- may be a necklace made out of its pretty details or maybe just a headband. You should part your wedding dress from you ONLY IF your lips part in a smile while doing so!
Be it our second skin (yeah, our clothing is actually our second skin!) or the skin under it, we all hate seeing it aging! Trust us, there is nothing worse than seeing your beloved wedding dress lying purposeless and growing old- losing shine, turning pale, getting brown oxidation spots, developing mold, mildew, and permanent wrinkles (fabric creasing). What all it needs is a bride with dreams who can again ‘nurture it further’ with a bucketful of hopes, joy, and smiles! It will bloom one more time and that’s the best you could do with your darling dress- giving it a purpose of taking another bride to her happily ever after! So, giddy up our ex-bride, give your wedding dress a pick-me-up booster and post it for sale (or for donation)! The mere thought that- “Some bride is going to get a pretty sweet deal!” will tickle you pink, imagine the joy and excitement when it will be sold (or will reach its new bride)! All the best!
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