The glitter and confetti have settled and the wedding playlist has faded, you have sent in the last of the thank you notes and the tan from your honeymoon is turning into a beautiful glow that goes hand-in-hand with the way you feel inside! Congratulations, new brides! The most perfect day of your life is over and you have a lifetime of memories to look back on and reminisce about. While you are still getting used to saying “Mrs” when you book a table for you and your sweetheart or the way the wedding band feels on your finger, there is still a lot to be done as you start this new season of your life. One of the things which might be meaning to get to is figuring out what to do with your beautiful wedding dress. If you are a bride who has always been clear about her intentions with her wedding dress, even before she walks into the wedding dress shop, and wants to pass on the joy and good luck provided by the pretty dress to another bride-to-be, selling your wedding dress might be one of the things which you must be considering for a while now. How to do it? Which platform is the best? How do you ensure your dress makes its way to another deserving bride, without you being ripped off? The questions are many, and we shall answer them all today! Here is all that you need to know while trying to sell that beautiful wedding dress.
Tips before selling the dress.
So you have made up your mind about selling your wedding dress, but are new to how exactly things work, making the decision to sell is only the first step in the order of business. There are several things to keep in mind and consider carefully before you list the wedding dress for sale:
• Is your wedding dress a popular style and size? Is it a dress of a more classic style, or a more trendy cut? How long has it been since your wedding and is it still in style? Is it seasonally appropriate? How easy or difficult will it be to find the ideal person for your wedding dress? All these questions will help you bridge the gap between your pretty dress and its new owner!
• Is the wedding dress in good condition? This question is especially important if you had your wedding ceremony in a rougher terrain like a forest, or a rocky beach. The style and theme of the wedding also are a significant factor in consideration as you evaluate this.
• Does your wedding dress need cleaning or repair? Attend to those requirements soon after the wedding, as it is very easy to forget about it when you are in such an exciting phase of your life. Even if you were wearing the dress in the most comfortable environment, chances are that it still needs a little pick-me-up to get rid of any unnoticeable stains or dust, makeup residue, or sweat.
• Sort out your emotions regarding the resale. Are you 100% okay with it? Because once the dress is sold, you can’t get it back, so if are unsorted about your feelings about your special dress or might want to pass it to your next generation or a family member, refrain from reselling the dress in the first place!
• Before you buy a designer dress just with resale in mind, think about all the possibilities! If for some reason you can't resell the wedding dress, will you be okay with the cost incurred on the dress while buying? While things will ideally work out, they can also go wrong! While you might not want to think about it, wine spills, tears, irrevocable damages are possible, so be open to the idea of not being able to sell the wedding dress too, and ask yourself whether you are okay with it.
Finding the right medium to sell the dress.
Sometimes, choosing the right medium for your wedding dress is everything, and can help your dress reach its perfect new match easily! There are a couple of different ways you can sell your wedding dress, and let us go through each one of them so that you can find the right way to do it, at your convenience!
• Online Marketplaces: These are the online marketplaces that are not specific to wedding dresses, but rather cater to a large variety of different things. Whether it is a Facebook Marketplace, Etsy, or eBay, there is a large variety of options out there and each platform works slightly differently.
• Online Wedding Dress Marketplaces: These are the platforms that enable the seller to sell only wedding dresses and charge a flat fee to sellers, which essentially makes things easier for a bride to sell her wedding dress in a few steps. While you can sell your dress on any of the platforms that you like, we recommend going with a site that concentrates on wedding dress resale primarily. There are a wide array of such wedding dress resale platforms out there for you to choose from.
• Second-hand Offline Shops: If you will rather sell off your dress in person in a physical shop, various second-hand wedding dress boutiques are peppering your city too. It's worth asking around in your neighborhood, and you might chance upon the most perfect shop that will buy that dress off your hands. However, every shop operates a little differently and while some buy the dress from you the day you bring it in, others might offer to sell the dress on your behalf. Be sure you talk about the rules and commissions before you sell the dress online.
Get your wedding dress ready to be sold
Even though you might have already done an initial inspection, we still encourage you to get your wedding dress professionally cleaned and ironed before you are ready to sell it off to another bride. Surely, a hopeful bride-to-be will appreciate your effort, it also makes the selling process a breeze as there will be fewer discrepancies in expectations. Getting your wedding dresses professionally cleaned can ensure your dress is sold twice as fast and with a lower rate of return, making investing in having it cleaned is well worth it.
Price the wedding dress right
Setting the price for your wedding dress is a crucial step in ensuring that you get your money's worth, while still ensuring that your dress is sold without much fuss. If your dress was a designer dress, you can start by pricing it for around 30 to 50 percent off the price you paid for it initially. However, if you’re not in a hurry or your gown wasn’t a very expensive one, to begin with, you can decrease the price more steadily, starting with 20 percent off and going from there. In the instance of reselling a vintage dress, you can quote the amount you paid for it, but it primarily depends on where you're marketing it. If you bought the dress from a high-end vintage boutique, you will need to find an equally prominent platform to sell it off, or you will want to drop the price to entice buyers on eBay.
Pay special attention to the pictures
In the time of online purchases, photographs speak louder than the text. It is an impactful way to make your gown stand out to potential buyers. Blurry unprofessional pictures with cropped-out shots are not something that a buyer will want to invest in, so the professional, full-length shots of the dress, preferably with you wearing the dress are ideal. However, you can also upload photos of your dress on a hanger to show how it looks presently, but that shouldn't be your primary clicks. The photographs should be taken in a well-lit area, with your best camera, and there should be a couple of different clicks of the front and back of the dress and several close-ups of any details.
Provide accurate measurements and detailed dress descriptions
While providing details for your wedding dress listing online, it is important to remember that no detail is too much! The idea is to put into text everything that can be said about the dress so that the buyer gets a vivid idea of the dress before they even order. This means correct measurements, the cut, style and fabric details, the designer or brand, and the condition of the dress. This will be a good time to disclose any imperfections, whether it has been worn or professionally cleaned. having all the details of the dress already laid out for the buyer to see will ensure there are no ugly surprises!
Write your listing text smartly
As part of your listing, you’ll be required to write a few sentences describing your gown. You can talk about your wedding dress’s unusual features, its primary sell points and its condition. This is where you can talk about features you love like lace sleeves, long trains, or scalloped edge veils. This is also where you can provide a bit of personal edge, expressing how it felt wearing that dress on your special day and how it can elevate the potential brides' wedding experience. Keywords are your friend and making that write-up search engine friendly is important for prospective brides to find your pretty dress easily. So make sure you pepper your write-up with relevant keywords, without making it too keyword-heavy.
Make it easy to return
The goal is to make it an easy process for the next owner rather than making it a fussy business. Considering that wedding dresses are a significant purchase, having the shoppers try the dresses at home and having the option of sending the dress if required can help the bride-to-be to be more interested in your dress. Easy returns are a major attraction for potential buyers and can help them warm up to your dress more, helping you sell your wedding dress faster.
Don't shy away from sharing your listing
You never know how the word really goes round, so sharing your dress listing with your friends, family members and anyone who might be getting married in a while might be a great idea. Take the help of social media platforms like Instagram or Facebook, and you will be surprised at the number of brides-to-be in your social circle. And just like that, your dress might find the perfect fit on someone you know!
Be patient and flexible
While in some cases the dress might be off your hands in just an hour, in other cases, it might take anywhere from a few weeks to a year to sell a used wedding dress online. While knowing the value of your dress is important, it might also help to be a bit flexible with the prices and to be open to lowering the price at some point or adding a fresh photo or new information to the listing. It is also okay to try both online and offline platforms at once, however, remember to take the online listing off as soon as you manage to sell your wedding dress offline, and vice versa.
We get it! Wedding dresses are full of emotions. They are more than just a pretty dress and can evoke a myriad of emotions. While it is a perfect keepsake for the most beautiful day of your life, it can also brighten up the day of many other brides in their lifetime! By selling your wedding dress, you are not just letting beautiful craftsmanship, the curation of the luxe fabric and the artistic cut of the dress go to waste after just one wear, but also you are enabling another hopeful bride to get that perfect dress, and at a much lower price too! There are many brides out there who are looking out for wedding dress resale and are nurturing hopes in their hearts that they will find their dream designer wedding dress at an affordable price. Whether it is for environmental reasons or economic reasons, selling and buying second-hand wedding dresses has a lot of pros to its name, and can be a great thing for the wedding dress industry and the planet as a whole. Whether you are passionate about the cause or are just looking to make some extra money after your wedding, you will never regret selling your wedding dress. The smile on the bride-to-be’s face is validation enough, and as for tangible memories, you will always have photographs to flip through!
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