I’ve never been one of those girls that dreamed of having a fairytale wedding. I’ve always had it in my head that I’d much rather have a wonderful marriage than a wonderful wedding day, so when my boyfriend proposed to me last Summer I immediately started thinking of the best ways to cut back on the cost.
You hear all sorts about how much the average wedding costs, The Independent newspaper did a survey last year about it, “According to a new survey of 4,000 brides, the average cost of a UK wedding is now a whopping £27,161 the highest it’s ever been and up 9.6 percent from last year.” :O I’ll admit that even the thought of spending that much money for the sake of one day brings a tear to my eye.
One of the big wedding expenses seems to be the bride’s wedding dress itself. For a dress that is only going to get worn for one day, I really can’t justify spending a huge amount of money on it, and so the hunt for a bargain begins…
I’d heard quite a bit about buying your dress from charity shops, ebay, and bridal shop clearances, but the one I was most interested to find out about was dresses made in China. I’m sure if you’ve typed ‘cheap wedding dresses’ into your search engine you’ll have come across it too, along with a mixture of success and disaster stories. I looked into the subject a bit more and the level of success seems to be based on the amount of research you do beforehand. I started looking at wedding dress reviews on youtube which were helpful, but then I heard about a certain facebook group I could join: China Dress and China Wedding supplies – purely reviews. The reviews on here are fantastic! They have buyer’s reviews of wedding, bridesmaids, and flower girl dresses mostly. If you find a seller that you’re interested in you can look them up and find out if others have had a positive experience with them. I highly recommend joining, there are lots of great photos and reviews and it is so helpful in deciding which seller and style of dress to go for.
The seller that I keep coming back to isn’t actually on ebay, but an independent website called JJ’sHouse. They have loads of beautiful dresses, you can buy a size or alternatively have them custom make you a dress based on your measurements. I find their website really easy to navigate, it’s easy to find the style you’re looking for by using their filters and the dresses are available in so many colours! On the dress listings themselves, you’ll often find reviews and photographs from others who have bought that style of dress so you can see for yourself what other people think. Since the choice is so high and the reviews are so good, I will most likely end up purchasing my dress from them – the only problem is deciding which one to choose!
As for bridesmaid dresses, I’ll probably buy from ebay. I’ve spotted a few that I like in the colour I want so fingers crossed that decision should be a little easier!
Obviously, I’ll give an update once I’ve bought and received my dress/dresses and let you know my thoughts.
If you’ve had any experiences (good or bad!) from buying a bargain wedding dress I’d love for you to share your stories in the comments.
Until next time!
Lyndsey
itcostshowmuch.wordpress.com 
Good luck on your hunt. My daughter is getting married and we are presently looking at dresses. Some of the prices are eye watering. She tried on a very simple straight lace dress with a price tag of over £2K!
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The more that I look at the cost of weddings overall the more it stresses me out – dresses, reception, even cakes! It all adds up quickly! Good luck to your daughter, does she have a date set?
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£27,161, for a wedding? Ouch!!
I remember seeing a while ago Debenhams had wedding dresses massively reduced, so if anyone’s lucky enough with timing it right these kind of one-off sales at department store type places could be quite handy. Wishing you all the very best with the hunt, I hope things don’t get too stressful (wishful thinking… clothes shopping stresses the hell out of me so I don’t know what I’d be like shopping for a wedding!) – will look forward to the next update!
Caz xx
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I’m not a big fan of clothes shopping either, I can never find exactly what I’m looking for! Like Debenham’s, there seem to be a lot more high street stores selling wedding dresses now. I recently saw a wedding dress in my local Next Clearance and I’ve discovered that Phase Eight and Asos do wedding dresses too.
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I can’t wait to hear your next update, and I hope that you find something truly beautiful 🙂 One of my friend’s bought their wedding dress from Monsoon; it was beautifully simple, elegant and reasonably priced. Some of the prices in the wedding boutiques can be eye-watering, can’t they?
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I hadn’t thought of Monsoon, they do some beautiful dresses.
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