Bargain or Bad Idea?

Recently I have been toying with the idea of buying my wedding dress from an online shop, which makes dresses in China at a fraction of the costs or a traditional bridal shop.

I was horrified to find out how much some of the dresses I liked would cost - I can not justify spending that amount of money on a dress I will only wear once! But that being said, I still want a proper wedding dress! I've seen dresses on the chinese sites for as little as £100 and I know that they won't be the same level of quality as one from the original designer - but I'm not sure I would mind..

Now, we've all heard the horror stories about dresses from abroad, where the fit is way off, the beading is shoddy and the dress is just generally badly made. But for such a low price, I'm tempted to go for it. For every horror story, there is a bride who was very happy with her cheap knockoff dress!

The thing I'm most concerned about is the ethical issues involved. Surely buying a copy of a deisgner dress is the same as buying a pirate DVD or illegally downloading music? Now, I'm not saying I havn't ever done those things - but they are technically illegal. Am i going to have my wedding dress confiscated for breaking copyright laws or something??

Luckily, other people have thought about the same issue and have explained their views much more eloquently than me!

I found this post on OffBeat Bride, where the author talks about why she thinks it's not unethical to buy a dress from an offhsore website. Here's a quote:


"While I personally had no interest in wearing a designer dress, I will say that I have no qualms with off-shore reproduction of name-brand designer wedding dresses through online spots like Kaersen. Many of the commercially-made dresses available at mainstream wedding boutiques are made in China anyway, and I don't think you're doing something inherently awful by taking money out of a big name designer's pocket. Vera Wang is a rich woman who dresses movie stars. The $5k you're not spending one of her wedding dresses isn't going to put her in the poor house. I kind of equate reproducing a designer wedding dress with pirating a Beyonce album.That said, I think it's a totally different game if you're reproducing a dress made by an independent designer!"

You can see the original post by clicking on the title of this post.

I think I'm going to go for it and save a massive chunk of our budget by getting a bargain basement wedding dress from China. I'll let you know when I've found the one I want!