My $260 Wedding Dress
This post is part of my From the Archive project, where I reshare personal content from my original blog, with some additional commentary from me in 2026. This wedding dress post is almost exactly like the original, with only a few minor edits. It's the story of picking my wedding dress, which ended up being simple, fast, and stress-free. I know, not a typical wedding dress story!
I'd love to do a vow renewal with my husband in the future, and despite loving the dress, how I pick my dress is one of the things I'd like to change.
I love thrifting, and my Mom magically finding the dress in the Goodwill was perfect for the time and for our budget, but I do wish I had the experience of trying on multiple dresses with my family and friends, and saying yes to the dress in an excited fashion. Maybe that will be my journey for our renewal, or maybe not. Thrifting is fun when you are on the hunt, but this dress came to me because my Mom happened to see it, rather than many visits searching for the dress. Maybe that's part of what's missing, there wasn't an adventure to find it?
Would I choose the same dress now? No, but the ideas I have now for a potential vow renewal are fairly similar, but without the longer trail, and a less heavy fabric. Let's see if future me still agrees. That would be a funny update post.
In either case, I'm grateful for this beautiful dress and for how perfect it was for our shabby chic Miami wedding. Preserving that story mattered to me. Thank you for reading.
Recently I was speaking with someone about how I had my wedding for under $10,000, and that prompted me to go back through my wedding related blog posts. To my horror, I realized I had not written a post about my wedding dress! My thoughts on what my wedding dress would be a few years ago versus the process I went through to actually chose my dress were completely different, so I knew I needed to share with you how I ended up with the dress of my dreams and saved $1,000 just by being flexible.
Several years ago, I shared my first wedding vlog where I talked about how my dream dress was the Snow White Alfred Angelo Disney collaboration, for $1,199. Considering my wedding Budget was $10,000 – that’s a huge chunk of the budget!
My original dream dress versus my used wedding dress:
Looking at the two dresses now, I’m startled by how similar they look as I didn’t intentionally go out looking for the same style. Honestly, if my budget had been bigger I may have never considered shopping around, but boy am I glad that I did.
It all started around February 2014, when I had found a wedding package with Grand Salon Reception Hall. As I was doing the numbers and seeing what was left in the budget, I thought to myself “Would I be heartbroken if I didn’t get the Snow White wedding dress?” and to my surprise, I wasn’t. I always thought it would have to be THAT dress after seeing it online that first time many years ago, but my heart was more open minded to other options that I had anticipated.
So I started looking around Etsy and adding some lower cost items to my Pinterest board, keeping my mind open, and then one day my Mom and sister called me in a rush telling me that they had found the perfect wedding dress for me at the Goodwill for only $60.
Technically, it was $100 but my Mom was able to get the price to $60 because she’s just clever at things like that.
If you’ve never been to the Goodwill, it’s a store where they sell gently used items at a steep discount. Every item they sell is a product they received from a tax-deductible donation.
I wasn’t able to tell much from the photo she texted me but they were so enthusiastic about it that I said to go ahead and make the purchase, taking a risk on the potential of such a steep deal (wedding dresses are non-returnable at the Goodwill).
When I came back from my vacation and saw my Mom again, she passed off the dress and I tried it on. To my surprise, it was almost a perfect fit.
Trying on my dress for the first time in my sister-in-law’s bedroom:
We only needed to bring up the length in the front, trim a bit around the bust, and add some buttons in the back to pick up the dress for dancing.
And boy was it fun to dance in!
The alterations ended up costing about $200, bringing my total cost of $260. That means I spent 80% less than I originally planned, an almost $1,000 difference from my original dress.
As I was prepping this post, I searched my dress for a tag and found one printed into the dress. The website is no longer live, but the brand is NY Atelier Vestidos de Novia (Bridal R Us). I’m sorry I can’t give any more information than that, all I can say is that I’m really glad the previous owner donated their dress. It really made me feel beautiful on my special day.
I hope that this post helped show you all what other options are available. Your dress dress may very well be in a thrift store!
Did you have an initial ideas about your wedding day, that you ended up being more flexible on than you originally thought?
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