Who says “THE” Dress Has to Make you Broke?

June 15th, 2009

You can find “THE dress” for thousands less than you think with some simple searching online. No, I’m not talking about buying a used dress off of Craigslist – I mean a brand-new, drop-dead gorgeous dress. Many brides spend days worth of shopping and arguing with moms & bridesmaids in the stores, and that’s simply not even necessary anymore. In fact, I ordered 2 sizes of the same dress from Isaac Mizrahi’s bridal line from Target at the time and decided I’d just chalk the return shipping charge up to convenience factor. I bought my beautifully simple and elegant strapless dress for $99, And I didn’t even have to knock out another bride at one of the occasional $99 dress sales at David’s Bridal. I saw a similar dress that I loved online at Ann Taylor for $600 as a backup in case it wasn’t “the one”, but luckily for me it was so I saved even more….Anyway, there’s more and more affordable options these days, from reputable stores you might not have thought of in your voyage to find the perfect dress – For instance, stores like JCrew & Nordstrom have some fabulous options. I’ve pulled some of the best valued ones from those 2 sites, but they have a wide variety so check them out yourself, and search for some others too!

The above dresses were pulled from Nordstrom online at $180, $228, & $308 respectively. You can likely offset some return shipping charges not only be saving on the dress cost but also potentially a lot in alterations compared to the way they many have to be custom tailored.

The above dresses cost $295, $795, & $995, respectively from JCrew.