DAY 86

EVERY bride I have ever seen on their wedding day has been beautiful.  I mean that.  I don’t know if it is the glow of happiness coming from within or the extra time spent in preparation, but they truly are all lovely.  I don’t know about you, but I would also say that I really can’t remember specifically what any of their wedding dresses looked like other than most were white.  Which is why I have never really understood the time and money that goes into the selection of a wedding dress.  I did a quick internet search on “Buying a Wedding Dress” and there were THOUSANDS of entries, all very series, about the proper selection method.

I will begin by saying, I’m on the left side of the bell curve (or the right side, I can’t ever remember which side indicates less or more than the median; statistics was never my strong suit)  in that I bought my wedding dress for $50 on my lunch hour one day.  It was new, but needed a trip to the dry cleaner as it had been tried on a few times and the hem was dirty (which was less than $100).

I happened upon this bridal boutique in Omaha, NE a couple of weeks ago.

Although the mannequin does look a bit aggressive

Believe it or not, this store is actually at the front of an upscale Goodwill and sells all used dresses.  The prices were from about $24.99 to $79.99.   I think this is a great idea, I mean there must be millions of used dresses hanging around out there, given all the married people out there (some multiple times).

So, I did a little research on second hand wedding gowns. There is actually a whole industry for those out there as well.

There are quite a few internet sites in which you can either list or buy wedding gowns.  The prices vary from $50- $15,000 (that was not a typo).  My favorite was one called PreOwned Wedding Dresses, another was  Bravo Bride.

There are also options to rent wedding dresses.  If you are interested in this, search by your city online.  That is good information, isn’t it?  I just basically pointed at a set of encyclopedias and told you to “look it up yourself”, like I was your sixth grade teacher .

I know many of us keep our wedding gowns in the hope that our daughters will wear them, but did you?   Does anybody actually wear their mothers wedding gown?  I’m sure there are some people, but I’ve never met them.  I say sell it now, pocket a few bucks and apply it to your daughters trendy consigned dress in 20-30 years.

Even if you are not buying  or selling a second hand dress to keep additional sequins and lace out of tomorrow’s landfill, the money savings alone seems to make it worth exploring.   People in the US spend more yearly on weddings than the GDP of most Eastern European countries (well the small ones anyway and I probably wouldn’t quote me given that I made that up).  What I didn’t make up, according to Reuters, is the average cost of a U.S. wedding was $27,021 last year.   This is the equivalent of an 11 1/2% down payment on a $234,550 new home which according to US Census Data was the average selling price of a  home in May 2012.

Some things just don’t make sense to me…