Buyer Beware… Cheap is not always cheerful.

Liz here again…..minus the cat (Tig) who is asleep on my bed right now!

Today I thought I would share some thoughts with you on buying dresses on the internet, and the pitfalls you are likely to come across if you do go down that route

OK, you have been to a couple of boutiques and tried on a dress or two but there is a particular one that you really like. But its a bit out of your budget.  You could  borrow a couple of hundred pounds from your great Aunt Marge, or you could scrimp a bit on the room decor and have your dream dress from a local retailer.  Or you could simply go home, fire up your laptop and try and search for a cheaper version of your dream dress from somewhere in the Far East, for less than £300. Thats a bargain right?

Yes, they may have “beautiful pictures of the actual dress that you saw today” but they are only pictures. Usually illegally copied from a manufacturers website and used to represent what they are selling….(they are not!)  But what will you receive in reality when the post man delivers your dress in six weeks time? 

What you will most likely receive is a poor copy cobbled together in a sweat shop and made from the cheapest materials available.  It will more than likely not even be the colour you ordered. 
Will you be able to return this to the seller?  Chances are that you wont, as there will be a no returns policy on the website or no address to send it back to.

So what happens next? After you have spent a week crying on your best friends shoulder, you try to make the best of the situation by taking your “dream dress” to a seamstress to try to rescue it and make it resemble the one in the picture that you thought you would receive. Unfortunately, the dress is probably too poorly manufactured for even the best seamstress to do anything with.
Or the alterations are going to cost more than you actually paid for your dress in the first place!  

Your only other option now is to go out and start your search over again and hope that you have enough time for a legitimate retailer to order your dream dress in time for your wedding.  Or you may end up buying a dress off the peg and settling for second best because you have already spent a chunk of your dress budget on your internet disaster.

You may think that spending £1000+  on your wedding dress from a local boutique is a lot of money for a dress that you are only going to wear once, but these dresses are made by professional dressmakers who spend hours painstakingly sewing every sequin and bead on by hand, and making sure every part of your dress is perfect. You are only wearing it once…..it needs to be PERFECT.

 A few examples of internet copies of wedding dresses are shown here……

Lots of Love

Liz xxx

P.S. Tig says Hi xxxx