In the life of every person, a wedding is one of the happiest and most beautiful moments, so everyone wants to spend it as beautifully, interestingly and unforgettably as possible. The newlyweds, immersed in wedding troubles, are trying to save at least something. Therefore, today many brides prefer to rent wedding dresses rather than buy them.
This behavior is understandable: buying a new dress costs a lot of money, but renting it is much cheaper. It makes no sense to buy an expensive dress, because you won’t be able to wear it anywhere else. This is exactly where Elena Hakobyan decided to make money. Today she agreed to share her experience with readers of Reconomica . Elena will tell you all the nuances of renting wedding dresses, and also give advice to those who want to try this business.
Where can you wear your wedding dress after the wedding – 7 best options
Are you deciding where to wear your wedding dress after the wedding and want to make some extra money from it? In this article you will find all possible options, among which everyone can choose the one that suits them. You will also learn what needs to be done with the outfit before giving it away, who may need it, how and where it should be stored after the ceremony so that it does not deteriorate.
How and where to store a wedding dress
Before packing the dress, it must be cleaned of dirt. This can be done at home or trusted to professionals. Difficult stains must be removed within 14 days after the wedding, only in this case there is a chance to keep the dress looking perfect. Even if there is no visible dirt, the outfit still needs to be cleaned. How to do this so as not to spoil the thing can be found in another article. It details how to wash a wedding dress at home.
You need to store your wedding dress in a special box. Such containers are made of breathable materials, mainly cardboard. The box should allow air to pass through well, and insects should not be able to get inside. To do this, you need to close the lid tightly.
You should place sheets of paper under the dress. Ordinary Whatman paper or corrugated paper will do. It is better not to use wallpaper and colored cardboard: they can stain the white material of the outfit. After this, you can wrap it in a white sheet.
The box can be purchased here: wedding-traditions.ru. A container for a wedding dress will cost $10-30. You can choose an option with the bride's initials engraved. If you don’t have extra money, you can take a regular cardboard box and cover it with sheets of white paper.
To prevent the outfit from acquiring an unpleasant odor over time, you can add sachet pads with the dress. After washing, do not spray perfume on your clothes.
Dresses are usually sold in plastic bags. After the wedding, such packaging should be discarded, since when stored in it, the outfit can quickly turn yellow.
Storage mode is important for a wedding dress. The humidity level should not exceed 60%. All year round, the temperature in the room where the box will be located must be maintained at 18-19 °C. The dress must be removed from it periodically and checked for stains. If the outfit has changed color, you will have to change the wrapping material.
Where can I give my dress after the wedding?
At the end of the celebration, you can sell your festive outfit. Before posting an ad, you will have to work on the dress. The easiest way is to take it to a dry cleaner, whose services will cost about 1,500 rubles. If you want to save money, you can wash your outfit on the delicate cycle in the washing machine. Then it needs to be steamed.
Sell online
The easiest way is to sell the dress to your friends. If there are no volunteers among them, you can publish an advertisement in a newspaper/website. In addition to a detailed description, you must attach several photographs of the outfit from different angles to the text. You also need to be prepared for the fact that potential customers will want to try on the dress. If you are going to resort to this method, you should first find out whether the wedding dress can be sold.
Give it to a consignment store
In this case, you need to understand that your item will not necessarily be sold. Worst case scenario: after numerous fittings, the dress will not be sold and will return to the owner in a fairly shabby state.
Giving the dress to loved ones is where else you can put it. This could be a sister or friend who is getting married.
You should not give a dirty item as a gift: all stains must be removed and the item carefully packed.
Another option is to give the outfit to a theater or dance club, where they will definitely find a use for it.
To rent
You can make money on a dress more than once, for which you should rent it out. It must be in good condition, without stains or other imperfections. The item can be taken to a bridal salon, but not everyone provides such a service. The reason is that sellers know how dresses react to dry cleaning, and yours may become damaged after the first wash.
You can place an advertisement for rent on a special website, rentmydress.ru. Before you offer clothes, you need to decide on the rental period. Usually it is 3-5 days. It is worth indicating not only the condition of the item, but also the rental amount. Upon receiving the deposit in hand (about 20%), the landlord must write a receipt to the tenant and sign the corresponding agreement.
Dry cleaning costs must be included in the rental price. You can earn approximately 1/3 of the original cost of the item by renting it. It is not worth increasing the price, since the dress is no longer new. You can read more about all these methods in another article. You will find out where you can donate your wedding dress after the wedding, what is needed for this and how much you can earn.
How about an alternative
There is a good alternative - the Internet. Where you can pre-offer your product using various sites, forums and social networks:
- taking photos from different angles;
- indicating the exact dimensions and actual condition;
- if any, then distinctive features (brand, for example);
- what height is it designed for;
- bonuses, if offered (free accessories: handbag, gloves, shoes, ring pad...).
Forums, social. networks, free sites for posting ads (Eve, Avito, Slando, Olkh) - convenient platforms where you can set a price that meets your needs. Moreover, brides from other Russian cities can become tenants: Chelyabinsk, Simferopol, Voronezh, Nizhny Novgorod and even former CIS countries.
It is important here to take the preparation of the dress (appearance) responsibly, since your future rental reputation will be built on this. In this case, it is enough to add your ad to the catalog to activate the search for clients.
The main difficulty is the need to monitor the condition of the item yourself, personally enter into an agreement with the tenant, negotiate various nuances, and then take the item back, carefully inspecting:
What else can you do with a dress?
After the holiday, there is no need to urgently get rid of your formal attire. There are many reasons to leave it. The bride can keep this outfit as a memory of her happiest day or give it to a friend or sister. Marriage is not always for life; some practical girls who do not believe in omens wear a dress when they get married for the second time.
This thing can still serve the housewife; you can use it to make:
- summer outfit;
- a seductive nightgown (for romantic evenings with your loved one);
- an envelope for a newborn, it is beautiful and very symbolic.
Dead weight: Where to put the wedding dress?
For the groom, a wedding suit is a profitable investment. Expensive jacket and trousers, after attending a wedding, will attend office negotiations, mother-in-law's anniversary, and then light up their younger brother or even son at the school graduation.
But the fate of the bride’s dress after the starry day is sad, like the poems of Evgeny Grishkovets. Most often, tulle-organzo-guipure works of art gather dust in closets and if they come out into the world, it is only for a wedding anniversary or to finally find peace in a second-hand store.
If you're confident that this won't happen to your symbol of purity, just take a look at this survey. Some very interesting answers came up:
Alas, closet and oblivion is the most popular scenario in the life of a “dress of one day.” And it’s good if they wear it at all - usually the very dress goes into oblivion forever. Former brides openly talk about what happened to their wedding dress:
I have had 3 weddings. And 3 dresses! I put two of them in a bag and took them to the garage... They don’t raise their hands to sell. I don’t see the point in putting it on and it takes up a lot of space. I ordered a dress. They sewed it for me. Wore it to a wedding. It's lying down now. And 11 years ago I bought a dress for 30,000. I wore it twice - for fitting and for the wedding. Now it’s somewhere with my mother))) I sewed it to order. 4,000 including material. It's in the closet. And the dressmaker cursed all the time, she sewed when I was pregnant and with severe toxicosis. I was constantly losing weight, and she had her dress sewn up.
More enterprising ladies sell dresses on Avito and similar sites. The option is practical, but you will never again see the outfit in which you gave each other two rings, and in addition you will lose a lot of money. You can sell a used dress for a maximum of half the price.
Some brides run their dress through the wheel of Samsara - alter it and wear it for summer walks. Economical and tasteful. And the USSR classic is a snowflake costume made from my mother’s wedding dress.
I got married for the first time in 1991. My mother made me a white suit, I wore it separately for a long time. And the second time in 2004. She was in a red dress and also wore it for a long time. Then I also made a skirt. I'll alter the dress a little, and in the summer I'll walk beautiful in a white dress)
Interestingly, many survey participants did not have to think about what to do with the dress at all. They simply gave the outfit back to where they got it from - for rental.
I decided that you couldn’t buy a good dress for 10 grand, but I rented a cool one for that money. And then my head didn’t hurt, what to do with it)))
There is a demand - provide an offer! Renting out your wedding dress is an opportunity to bring it out into the public once again and earn some good money. Let's see how profitable it is. In Moscow salons, dresses are rented for half the price. The average rental price is from 5 to 20 thousand. On Avito you can rent out the most important outfit from 1 thousand to 10 thousand rubles, if your outfit is similar to what Kate Middleton chose.
But keep in mind that in order for someone to rent your dress, you have to work hard. If you were caught in the eye of a tornado or posed for a photograph in a burdock thicket, your chances of becoming a successful businessman are creeping down, like potato prices in September.
How long does it take to rent out?
I said that I chose this passive income option because I didn’t have a lot of free time. Here, no special expenses were required.
It was necessary to submit and periodically update advertisements. I did this calmly during working hours, since my type of activity was related to computers and a constant connection to the Internet.
View and try on
Then we had to invite clients to view and try on. The procedure usually took place at my home and at a time convenient for all parties, most often in the evening. Sometimes I met customers halfway and brought the dress to their home. But this was only done if the girl lived in the city center or near my area. On average, this took about 30-40 minutes, not counting the journey.
Of course, there were exceptional cases - some girls take fitting very seriously, call relatives, etc. Then the process stretched out for an hour, after which I usually honestly said that I was in a hurry and could not wait any longer.
Returning a dress
The last step is to take the dress back. Here, too, everything was decided by agreement with the client. Sometimes one of my relatives would bring the outfit back to me, but usually I would pick up the dress myself.
How to save a wedding dress for rental?
Constantly picking up your hem, refusing to take a photo shoot outdoors, and screaming hysterically when your best man comes up to you with a tomato is not an option. You will not relax and will only ruin the holiday. It can be made simpler:
- Buy a can of nanospray that repels water and dirt. Important: test the miracle of science on a fabric sample in advance - streaks may remain on the dress.
- If you still decide to go for a walk in the dripping rain, bring wet wipes and an umbrella.
- Take the dress to the dry cleaner as soon as you finish counting the donated money. Tell the dry cleaning employee in detail about the origin of the stains - this will increase the likelihood that the outfit will be returned perfectly clean.
- Store the dress in a dark, dry place in a breathable bag made of natural materials (to prevent mold from growing). And dresses made of very light fabric are best put on a tailor's mannequin.
Does your dress look even better after the wedding than in the store? Great! The only thing left to do is to find happy brides with good taste, who want more than anything to be the most beautiful and save money. Where to look for them?
The simplest option
There is another way - rent it out to a showroom, where you, of course, won’t have much from one rental, since they usually pay 40-50% of each rental, but organizational issues: dry cleaning, finding clients, concluding agreements become narrower their headache. You will only need to appear there periodically and collect your interest.
The main thing, when transferring the goods, is to conclude an agreement directly with the organization, which should specify the rights and obligations, as well as responsibilities on both sides. And even if you suddenly change your mind, you can always pick up your outfit, warning in advance (no later than 2 weeks) so that they do not look for clients for it.
Where can you donate your wedding dress after the wedding: all the possible ideas
Where can you take your dress after the wedding to get something for it? Why should it and should not be sold? We will tell you how much it can realistically cost to do this, where and under what conditions it is accepted, and when it is necessary to put the outfit up for sale. You will learn about the specifics of renting a wedding dress, what papers are needed for this, what deposit to take from the renter, and what to pay attention to when returning the dress.
How is the cost calculated?
I advise you to find out in advance, as accurately as possible, how much dry cleaning of your particular style will cost in order to correctly calculate the rent.
Remember that people don’t turn to rental cars because they have a good life. Average brides usually look for an outfit in the range of 2000-3000 rubles, sometimes a little more or even less, depending on possibilities.
So, if the model initially cost around 8,000 rubles, then you can sell it for 1,600 (20%) + 1,000 (for dry cleaning) = 3,600 rubles. But calculate the deposit taking into account the remaining amount of 8000 - 3600 = 4400 rubles. If you wish, you can reduce the deposit by another 2000 rubles, then it will be 2200.
In any case, if the product is returned late or with some defects, you can always deduct from the deposit the amount necessary for its restoration. Up to and including non-return if there is severe damage that cannot be restored.
Is it possible to sell a wedding dress?
There are some signs among the people that absolutely cannot be used to sell a wedding dress. They say that it serves as a talisman for the newlywed and has healing powers. If a husband or child falls ill in the family, then by wearing it you can cure the sick person. There is also a legend according to which a girl who sells a dress risks being left without family happiness.
If you nevertheless decide to put your wedding dress up for sale, you should know what you can and cannot offer to the buyer along with it. Thus, the following can be safely transferred for the use of others:
But in no case is it recommended to sell a veil or even just give it to someone to try on, because it is a symbol of family well-being and comfort. With its help, you can remove the evil eye or damage from children or from your husband. Another article explains even more about whether you can sell a wedding dress. You will learn what signs exist in this regard, what you need to do in order not to bring trouble upon yourself even after receiving funds.
How much can you sell a dress for after the wedding?
If you choose a consignment store, you will receive little for your outfit - no more than 25-30% of the original cost. This is due to the fact that its main visitors are people with little income.
The bridal salon may offer a good amount, but not the same amount as you bought the dress for. In this case, you can count on approximately 50% of its original cost. Another 30% will come from the intermediary services of store personnel.
When selling a dress using a newspaper, the price for a used item will be 10-20% higher than in the case of consignment stores and boutiques. Then you will not need to pay for the services of intermediaries, you will only have to spend money on publishing the ad. Often it is offered for free.
Dress for sale in a consignment store
The final cost is affected by:
- Product condition. If the outfit is damaged - torn or dirty, the price is reduced by more than 50%.
- Age of the dress. New dresses are bought more often because they look better.
- Color. The greatest demand is for the white palette; outfits in pink, beige and other shades are 10-20% cheaper.
- Brand. People are willing to pay for designer clothes with exclusive designs. If your dress, for example, is from the designer Vera Wang, then you can safely ask for 80% of the cost of the product.
- Model and style. If the model and style of the dress are popular in the season, then the price for it will be quite high.
- Fabrics used. Clothes made from natural fabrics are more expensive than those made from synthetics.
- Availability of accessories. The fact is that additional elements (bows, brooches, belts, etc.) also increase the cost of the product.
If you want to save money, you should prepare the dress for sale yourself. To do this, you need to wash and steam it at home.
If you do decide to sell, the outfit must first be washed. How to do this at home, what to use for this and what to consider, read in another article.
After washing, you can’t do without ironing. You want to earn as much as possible on your outfit, right? Then you should find out how to send a wedding dress. Our other article will help you with this. From it you will learn how much this service costs and how to do it yourself at home so as not to spoil the thing.
Here, too, a lot has been written about what can and cannot be done with a dress after the wedding.
My income
Of course, my option cannot be called a stable source of passive income. One rental cost, at that time, 2,000-3,000 rubles; dresses were usually rented 1 to 3 times a month. Once, in the summer, there were 4 orders, but this was our final record.
Dependence on the time of year
Since my dress was short and more adapted to the warm season, it was rarely worn in winter. In general, in cold weather, most girls buy closed dresses, which are combined with capes, fur coats, etc., so during this season, rental income was minimal.
The largest sums were obtained during the peak of wedding celebrations - mid-spring (after the end of Lent and the celebration of the famous Krasnaya Gorka) and summer.
Plus, at that time, I was quite lucky: orders from AliExpress and other Chinese resources were not as popular then as they are today. Now that you can buy an unusual dress from a manufacturing plant for 3,000-5,000 rubles, this would affect the rental price and significantly reduce demand.
Income dynamics
In general, income dynamics can be described as follows:
- December-March: from 2,000 to 3,000 rubles;
- April-June: from 3,000 to 6,000 rubles;
- July-September: from 5,000 to 9,000 rubles;
- October-November: from 3,000 to 4,000 rubles.
This is an approximate picture. Of course, there were bad months when dresses were never returned, mostly in the winter.
Where and when to sell a wedding dress
You need to try to find people willing to purchase a wedding dress approximately 2-3 years after the celebration. They tend to lose their original beauty over time - turn yellow, tear, shrink. No one has canceled fashion trends.
Commission shop
To hand over such an item to a consignment store, you need to make sure that it is more or less in good condition. The outfit must be clean, ironed, without holes . You can prepare it yourself or take it to the dry cleaner. For such a service they charge 1700-1900 rubles.
What needs to be completed
Important:
- Enter into a contract.
- Draw up an acceptance certificate.
- Write a receipt for the money taken from the client.
Despite so many formalities, sometimes only thanks to them you can avoid many unpleasant situations.
As for timing, this is purely individual. Usually the dress is returned a couple of days before the wedding, plus another 2-3 days after, but if the return is delayed, then a pre-agreed fine specified in the contract will be charged. By the way, you can add the cost for this or that damage to the amount of the fine, item by item, so that the deposit is returned in full.
