BHLDN / Anthropologie: What Brides Paid

What brides paid

Every row is one bride: what she paid for the gown, what the tailoring came to when she reported it, and the year.

What brides recommend it for

• Arrived 9:45am to a line inside the door; the store extended past its 11am close for everyone queuing. Racks held gowns, short white dresses, veils, overskirts and bridesmaid dresses.
• On a similar sub-$500 budget the stylist only pulled things she could actually buy; points to the little white dress and sale sections, which are hidden from the main bridal category.
• Bridal area is curtained off at the back of a free-standing Anthropologie and is small, but a booked appointment gets a full hour of one-on-one attention with pre-pulled styles.
• Arrived 6:45am, inside by 7:30. Shopping for two dresses as street size 0s, they looked at sizes 2 to 6 expecting alterations, and her fiancee found hers after about an hour.
• Most options she found at her price point, far more pleasant staff than the chain, and the dress arrived at her house within six weeks instead of a three to six month wait.
• Browsable and orderable online with in-store options too; gown about $1,000 and alterations about the same again. Bought in August for a November wedding with no problems.
• Bought here after touring boutiques; price-to-quality far better than salons, 30-day returns, and the dress arrived five days after ordering instead of a 6-8 month wait.
• Arrived 5am for a 7am opening and was first in line; fifteen shoppers admitted at a time, three dresses per fitting room trip. Bought a Jenny Yoo Madeline corset gown.
• Drop-waist stretch satin gown that several brides independently picked as the closest affordable dupe; last season's, so also findable on Poshmark and StillWhite.
• Needed more structure than cheap bridal options gave her; a Watters gown off the sale rack fitted her under-1000 budget and looked far better on than anything cheaper

What brides warn about

• Bought a clearance gown in March 2020 without trying it on, which she calls a gamble; did not try it for a year, then had the train cut off before the wedding but says the dress is beautiful.
• The only gown she has found matching the drapey off-shoulder satin look after a long online search, but the straps need converting, which she expects to push the total past 2000.
• Turned up at 10am to a quiet store with maybe 50 to 100 dresses left and no fitting room limit. Passed on a damaged out-of-size Watters at $400 and left empty handed.
• Went in expecting to buy there and left underwhelmed; the tulle skirts widened her short, narrow-hipped frame and quality lagged a 950 boutique gown.
• Their periodic sample sales drop gowns from over $2,000 to under $300, but stock is unpredictable; her best find came on a day she was not shopping.
• In the first fifteen but as a size 2/4 found the selection thin and lost a dress she wanted to another shopper; left with an impulse veil instead.
• Tried six dresses and left hating her body; says the stock simply did not suit her shape and she needed other shops to recover her confidence
• Bought a white dress there for an elopement under $200, but some items will not ship outside the US and the site only tells you at checkout.

How it compares

The median across every route in this dataset is $850, a bridal salon runs $1,900, and secondhand sits lower again. A shop is worth judging against the route it belongs to rather than against the whole market, which is what the where-to-buy page sets out.

Sources

Price reports on this page come from 65 public discussions where brides answered in their own words. Each comment that stated an amount became one row; notes are paraphrased, never quoted.