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Budget Wedding Planning |
Plan My Wedding (Home) > Budget Wedding Planning > Cheap Wedding Dress When Your Dream Dress Clashes with Your Budget Pictures
When Your Dream Dress Clashes with Your BudgetCreative Ways to Find a Cheap Wedding DressOn Bravo's hit reality show, Project Runway, the would-be designers were assigned the task of designing wedding dresses for their models. All the young cat walkers gleefully indulged in their princess fantasies - the frillier the better. The wedding dress is the key part of a perfect wedding for many women. Although brides would love to look like princesses, most do not have a royal budget. Finding a cheap wedding dress can be stressful because economizing can result in the bride marching down the aisle in an eyesore. The disaster of an embarrassing gown does not have to happen. With a little bit of exploration and research, brides can sometimes luck onto a gorgeous creation for a less-than hideous price tag. Something Borrowed and/or OldThe most economical way of paying for a wedding dress is to not pay for it. Brides can turn to their mothers and grandmothers for their wedding dresses and save lots of money, while honoring their family. The best kind of cheap wedding dress is a free one, and wearing a dress that's been in the family is often a reverential experience; far from being merely a hand-me-down, the wedding dress becomes an heirloom. Something Bought and/or OldWearing your grandmother's dress from WWII is a lovely way to cut corners, but sometimes that's not an option. Borrowing a girlfriend's wedding gown can seem tacky (it's not a scarf or a sweater, after all), so another option in procuring a cheap wedding dress is to buy a used wedding dress. Buying someone's cast-off wedding dress can look unseemly and desperate at first, but it doesn't have to be. Working at a hotel for a couple years, I've witnessed couples planning weddings only to cancel them. The bride is now left with a dress she cannot bear to look at and her misery can be your chance at a cheap wedding dress. Would-be brides (as well as, almost-brides) often put their new and in-great-shape dresses on auction on sites such as Ebay hoping to recoup some of the money they spent on their defunct weddings. Amazon.com is another site that offers designer gowns at (sometimes) cheaper prices. Scouring the Internet for sellers is another great way to find a cheap wedding dress. Sites such as www.usedweddingdresses.com offer new and slightly-worn used gowns that can be an attractive alternate to having a dress custom made. The prices on these sites can sometimes be as low as $175, as opposed to $6,000 starting price for a Vera Wang creation. A similar site, www.almostnewweddinggowns.com, offers prices that are sometimes over 30% off the retail prices. Does It Have to Be a Wedding Dress?While many women would love to be decked out in acres of tulle and lace, sometimes wearing something different can be an interesting and frugal choice. To avoid paying astronomical sums for wedding gowns, brides can also look into the option of buying high-end bridesmaid dresses or elegant evening dresses. A cheap wedding dress doesn't have to technically be a wedding dress. The cliché of the hideous bridesmaid dress, complete with oversized bows and ruffles, unfortunately turns out to be true, as witnessed at many of the weddings I've attended. However, with skillful searching, a frugal bride-to-be can find a cheap wedding dress that's meant to be a bridesmaid dress or an evening gown, but with some creativity can double as a wedding dress. Cutting Corners Recklessly Can Leave Your Wedding in TattersIt's always good to set a realistic budget and stick to it. However, in her zeal to save cash, a bride can turn her prospective night into a tacky and hokey affair where it is all too evident to the guests that money matters dominated the wedding planning. When deciding on a used dress it is vital that the bride makes sure that the dress is in excellent condition - even "good" condition can be suspect. The idea behind the cheap wedding dress is that it doesn't look like a cheap wedding dress, and it takes some finesse to pull it off. Also, if a bride decides on the more economical bridesmaid gown, she needs to make sure that the dress does look like a wedding gown. Showing up in a knee-length, aubergine cocktail dress will get the bride shown to a pew instead of escorted down the aisle.
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