Goodwill / thrift shops: 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

• Browsed the auction site and found a surprising number of name-brand wedding gowns listed, including Vera Wang, Alfred Angelo and David's Bridal; suggested it as a fast cheap replacement route
• Won an unbranded silk ceremony gown as the only bidder at 39.99, 57 with shipping and fees; the seamstress judged it custom made and it needed only a couple of seams resewn.
• She found a designer gown for 30 in a thrift shop and rebuilt it herself with about 150 of materials, which taught her how much labour a full resize really is.
• Sourced decor and dinnerware over a summer from estate and garage sales, two local thrift stores and classifieds, and says the whole wedding ended up thrifted.
• Where her $17 gown came from. Length was right off the rail and only the waist needed letting out by about an inch. She notes plus-size stock there is thin.
• Bridal gown sat on the rack at 25 for six weeks while other dresses sold, then went home for 12.50 in an everything-half-off sale; still fits years later.
• $60 unlabelled gown with pearl buttons down the back, about half a size too big; a full-lace mermaid gown was on the same rack and the staff were friendly
• Sees wedding dresses at roughly 100 or less on regular browsing trips. She notes these are called thrift shops in the US, so she is not on the US dollar.
• Receives sample gowns direct from local bridal shops and prices them very low; she saw a mother-of-the-bride dress there still carrying a Kleinfeld tag.
• Donated her preserved gown, cathedral veil and tiara there after 35 years of storage and three daughters who did not want it; says letting go felt good

What brides warn about

• A full day hitting every mall store, several bridal shops and thrift shops turned up nothing fitted and lacy inside a 500 budget; everything in that style was designer priced.
• Found a brand-new David's Bridal gown with tags at 70 against a 700 tag; calls it a real saving but steep by Goodwill standards, and left it for another bride
• Plenty of gorgeous gowns on the site, but listing photos are often poor and the sizing information is unreliable or absent, so buying is a gamble.
• Regular shopper says their wedding gowns usually run 80s styles, so a classic cut at $60 is luck; that price is under most winter coats there
• Cheap online charity auction dress that was fine until she compared it with a 1200 gown she tried later; the dress is okay rather than loved
• Fun day out and she bought a $20 dress as a backup, but nothing is a blank slate: older gowns were tailored to another woman's proportions.
• An avid thrifter says dresses were 50 or under a few years ago and now run 100 to 200 plus; one gown sat unsold for months at 150
• Stuck with a thrifted dress that does not fit, is not her style, and would cost more to alter than she wants to spend.

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 16 public discussions where brides answered in their own words. Each comment that stated an amount became one row; notes are paraphrased, never quoted.