Day 3: Say Yes to the Dress...for much, much less

I absolutely ADORE my wedding dress. I would wear it everyday. It was perfect. But you know what I love most about my wedding dress? It was custom made and cost me $350. Yep, this dress was only $350.

Like most brides, as soon as we were officially engaged,  I began scouring the internet for wedding dress. I was horrified and my heart sank when I saw how much wedding dresses cost. The cheapest being about $2000. There was no way I could afford that, but I kept looking.
I fell in love with a designer dress that cost $1900. I went to the local bridal shop and tried it on. I knew this was THE dress. I cried knowing that I wouldn't be able to afford it.
I started spending hours on used wedding dress for the dress, but no such luck.
Then one day as I was browsing Etsy, I came across their wedding dress section. I had no idea that you could even buy wedding dresses on Etsy. I found a listing for "custom wedding dress" and reached out to the shop owner.
I told her exactly what I wanted, sent her the link to the designers website and waited. She messaged me back saying that it would be no problem and told me what measurements she would need.
I was super nervous about ordering a dress online. What if I hated it, or it looked nothing like the dress I tried on? The shop owner assured me it would be great, and offered a 100% guarantee. I ended up ordering my dress 9 months before my wedding, and it showed up at my door 25 days after I ordered it.
When I got the dress it was too short! There was some confusion on whether to measure with shoes or not. I contacted the shop and she told me to send it back, and she would take care of the issues for free, I just had to pay shipping ($30 DHL). So back it went and about a month later I had my dress again. It was perfect! It looked exactly like the dress I tried on at the bridal salon, and fit me perfectly!
I was ecstatic! By buying the "knock off" dress, I got my dream dress for about $1500 less than the designer. This opened up $1500 to spend somewhere else for our wedding.

A couple pieces of advice. If you are ordering your dress online, order SUPER early. That way you have time to send back for alterations if necessary.

And two, always measure with your wedding shoes on, and be generous with your length measurement. Its so much easier to hem extra fabric than it is to add length to a dress.

For those wondering, I got my dress from the Etsy shop Kiss Bridal.

This is day 3 of a 31 day series. To see the rest, click here.

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