Sales Wedding Dresses are More than Just ‘Cheap Wedding Dresses’

You might think that wedding dresses that are on sale are merely an opportunity to get a cheap wedding dress. But they are so much more. In fact, they offer you a tremendous opportunity. So let’s take a moment to look at why you might consider buying one.

A wedding dress on sale isn’t the same as a cheap wedding dress

A sales dress is a great opportunity to get a designer wedding dress at an excellent price

Wedding dresses go on sale for numerous reasons, but never because they are inferior in any way, especially if you’re buying one from a reputable wedding dress shop. They will have bought high-quality stock in the first place. Putting a dress on sale doesn’t mean it’s suddenly become a low-quality gown. It’s still the same beautifully made and designed dress it was when it first arrived in the shop.

You might be tempted to think that the dress is somehow out of date, because it belongs to a design studio’s previous collection. That’s very rarely the case. Contemporary wedding dresses remain topical and current for several seasons. They don’t simply go out of style overnight. And classic wedding dress designs are always in fashion.

In short, despite being offered at a reduced price, sales wedding dresses will still be high-quality and in fashion.

So why do wedding boutiques put their dresses on sale?

CREATING space

A key consideration is space in the shop. Every season we buy in new dresses as part of the agreements we have with the design studios we work with. That means we need to free up some space on our racks to accommodate the new dresses.

The choice of which dresses to rotate out of our collection and put into a sale is partly down to a popularity contest.

Each time we buy, we’re using our experience to decide which dresses we think will appeal to brides in Munster. And we always succeed in bringing home dresses that brides love. 

Some dresses are big sellers, while others take a while to find their bride. Sometimes, a dress hasn’t yet been picked up by the time the next season comes around and we need to make space on the racks. So we will put it on sale to make room.

The same goes for dresses that we take a little gamble on. Dresses that are a bit quirky, fun and out of the ordinary. We always add a few of those to the selection we order at the wedding dress trade shows, knowing full well that they might not sell lots or even not sell at all. We’d rather take a chance on a dress than simply stay within our comfort zone. Just like the designers we like to work with, we like to push the boundaries a bit as well, rather than risk going stale. Besides, there are plenty of brides who are looking for something that’s a little different.

However, it does happen that the right bride hasn’t come along before we need to free up some space.

Keeping the shop’s wedding dress collection fresh

By moving dresses from a previous year’s collection onto our sales racks, we’re not only able to free up space, but it helps keep our main collection fresh and up to date as well.

That’s important because brides don’t want to buy the same dresses that they saw their sisters or friends wear at their weddings. 

And it’s nice for us as well, to be seeing and working with exciting new designs every year. We’re not seeing and selling the same dresses again and again. Like we said, we don’t want to become stale.

But it’s not only a desire to see something new each year that puts dresses on the sales racks. Even extremely popular and relatively new designs may be placed on sale. It might be that the design studio has decided to discontinue the dress. Or the fabric they have in stock to make a particular design may be running low. In those instances, it’s better for us to move the dress or dresses in question out of our collection.

Sometimes a dress is moved to the sales rack because the design studio has indicated its stock of the pattern or material is running low

A sales dress is not a second-hand dress

One of the key things to know is that designer wedding dresses that go on sale have been tried on by brides. But they haven’t ever been fitted to a bride or worn at a wedding, so they are still pristine in that regard. And we make sure that every dress that goes on sale has been spot cleaned and, if necessary, repaired.

The fact that they have never been fitted for a bride sets them apart from second-hand dresses, which will have been altered to fit another bride, whose body shape might be very different from yours. 

Undoing alterations and then making new ones to make the dress fit you isn’t always possible with a second-hand gown. And it’s impossible if the bride who wore the dress before you was shorter than you, and the skirt has been taken in.

As a side note, a sales dress will probably be too long for you when you try it on. All wedding dresses start life to suit tall tall brides as well as shorter ones. Matching the length of the skirt to your height is one of the bespoke alterations that makes the final fitted wedding dress truly yours. Obviously, it’s easier to make a dress shorter than it is to add fabric to make it longer.

Not all wedding dresses are fitted. You could also pick up an off-the-peg dress at a wedding dress sale. These aren’t intended to be fitted to a bride. They’re like the clothes you buy on the high street, where clothes sizes are general, rather than specifically tailored to your body.

Because they often haven’t been tried on as much as wedding dresses intended to be altered and fitted to a bride, you often find that off-the-peg dresses are in very good condition indeed. In our experience, they are extremely popular on sale days.

How to make the best of a sale day

Sales wedding dresses suit the price-conscious bride who is looking to buy a dress from a top designer at a fraction of the usual cost. The savings are considerable and typically range from 30% to 70% off the standard price tag.

But don’t be driven by price. Know what you are looking for when you come to a sale day and be ready to buy. Stock does move quickly when we hold these days. So come prepared with a good plan.

If you are having a more traditional wedding in a church, you may be drawn towards more classical designs. Contemporary sales dresses will appeal more to brides who don’t necessarily follow trends. Their wedding is perhaps going to be a little out of the ordinary. Know your preference when you go to a sales day.

Also, take your visit seriously. A sales day isn’t an invitation to have a bit of craic with the girls to try on a range of dresses for fun. It’s an opportunity for brides to find a dress that they adore at a lower price. So our attention is devoted to helping them do just that.

Related to this: don’t come to a sale day if it is your first visit to a bridal boutique. You need to have an idea of what you are looking for and the best way to have that is to have already visited one or two shops beforehand.

Because sales days are busy and first-come, first-serve, you won’t receive much in the way of styling advice on a sales day, like you would if you were booking a timeslot in which we can dedicate all our time to helping, guiding and advising you. So it is important you have a clear picture of what you are looking for.

In other words, you need to have done your homework in advance.

If you do, you will stand a much better chance of finding a designer dress that you adore at a fraction of the cost you’d normally pay. Sales dresses are tremendous value and can benefit the right bride, who is a little more flexible in the dress she wants to wear on her wedding day.