Liz Cox, Meant to Be Boutique
Shopping for the dress you’ll become a wife in is one of the more thrilling steps in your wedding planning process. It’s not every day that you get the opportunity to shop through an endless selection of pretty white gowns with champagne in your hand! Whether you’re the girl who has dreamed about your wedding dress your whole life or you’re the girl who hasn’t given it a single thought, this is going to be such a special time in your life and we hope you feel celebrated well when you say that joyous “yes!” after finding the perfect one.
There are lots of wonderful bridal boutiques to shop at in Kentucky, most of which are all special order shops. When looking for your wedding dress, we encourage you to also look at bridal shops, like Meant To Be Boutique, whose inventory are all off-the-rack. Off-the-rack gowns can help accommodate for shorter wear dates and also help you maintain an affordable budget for your gown.
When it comes to buying a consigned or sample gown, here’s a little bit of advice from us. We highly encourage brides to make an appointment at a consignment/sample shop like Meant To Be because we think you’ll be pleasantly surprised. At our shop and other quality consignment boutiques, brides will find high quality, gorgeous gowns at a fraction of their original cost. If it’s the right gown for you, you’ll feel just as radiant on your wedding day no matter if it is a special order or off the rack gown. All your guests are going to see is a beaming bride in a gorgeous gown with a giddy smile!
Our biggest pieces of advice is to have an open mind about consigned/sample gowns. We feel like a lot of people are hesitant about shopping this kind of inventory because they don’t know where the dresses come from, but that’s just silly! What people don’t realize is that the inventory of shops like Meant To Be are around 80% sample gowns instead of previously loved gowns. Consigned/sample gowns can make you feel just as beautiful as special-ordered, never-worn ones. Once a bride grabs ahold of that perspective, shopping is smooth sailing!
After your big day, whether or not you’ve made up your mind about consigning your own dress, we suggest you get your dress cleaned and preserved soon after your wedding. You’ll nip stains from the big day in the bud, which is important whether you’re preserving or selling! After that, we’d encourage you to take your time when making the decision to consign — at least three months after your wedding. The last thing we want is for someone to say goodbye to the most precious dress they’ll ever own before they are really ready to see it go. If after three or more months you still want to sell it with the hope that it will bring another bride joy on her big day, then we say go for it!
Some people may wonder what kind of profit they can expect to make from selling their dress. This depends on the way you choose to sell it. If you consign your gown through a boutique like Meant To Be, you can expect to get around 50% of the profit. This may not seem like much to some brides, but we can almost guarantee that you’ll have more success selling your dress through a brick and mortar shop over a website. By consigning through a brick and mortar, a sales consultant is doing all the hard work for you! They are advocating for your dress and working hard to find it a good home. Selling through a website may help a bride gain more profit off the sale, but she may not have much success in actually having the sale go through.
No matter what type of boutique you shop for your dream dress at, whether it be a shop like Twirl Boutique that is full of brand new gowns to choose from or a shop like Meant To Be with a variety of previously loved gowns waiting for a good home, our hope is that you find a dress that makes you feel absolutely radiant! We hope you feel cared for, listened to, and celebrated well as you pick out the perfect dress to say “I Do” in.