Refurbishing wedding dress for sale

kittiwoz · 18 October 2006 at 1:56PM

I bought a wedding dress in a charity shop a couple of years ago for use in a Bride of Frankenstein Halloween outfit. It would obvioulsy have been an expensive dress new. (In fact it had the tag on but I cut it off, I can't remember what it said but I think it might have been originally £750.) Being very little I couldn't walk in without tripping over so I cut down the underskirts and tacked up the overskirt. Since I wore it for Halloween it has been balled up in a carrier bag in our cellar. Bad idea I know along with the cutting into the underskirts. Anyway it is now stained by the damp. I'm going to cut out the underskirts and wash the remainder of the dress by hand. I know it is probably supposed to be dry clean only but I couldn't afford that it it is badly marked so I think in need of a good wash. It honestly can't make it worse because it is looking pretty wrecked as it is.

Now I can think of two options for this dress. Either I can try to return it to its original state or as near as I can get it or I can try to convert it into a retro eighties style party dress. I can see three ways the washing could go: Either it miraculously works and the dress looks clean and the fabric holds up to washing fine, or it looks OK in a would hold up for photos kind of way but has some small marks or shrinkage which you might notice close up, or the dress is wrecked and I can't get the stains out. If it is the third then obviously I'll try giving it a dye job and converting it to a part dress but what do you think I should do in the other two cases? I can make a new underskirts for the dress. Also if I go with the convertion to party dress what do you think I should do about the length. This dress is floor length with a train. Kind of fun though annoying and not really appropriate for a party dress I'm thinking. I guess I could shorten it to about knee hight and maybe give it a lot of net underskirting to make it flare out. Do you think that would be the best way to do it? I'm interested to know what people think before I wash it because if it seems like it would be best to convert it into a party dress by cutting it short whatever the outcome I could cut some of the length off the skirt before I wash it which would make it a slightly easier job.

Bargainbabe_2 · 18 October 2006 at 5:00PM

Well, is the work to restore it going to be worth it? Not only that if you do decide to sell it and its not up to scratch then you'll have a disgruntled buyer on your hands.

Me personally, I wouldn't bother and I would charity it-JMO.

vickym · 18 October 2006 at 5:24PM

Just wanted to point a few items if you are intending to dye the dress if it doesnt wash ok.
Firstly, are there any buttons, sequins, lace ,zips etc on the item as when you dye an item these areas dont always take the dye very well and you could end up making the dress worse.

You are obviously confident enough to alter the dress - so one suggestion may be, if part of the area that you tacked up is stained with damp then maybe cut a bit off the length of the dress and try washing it - measure it first, that way you can see if the material shrinks and also if the acutal stain will come out.

Only my suggestions, someone else may be along with more advise soon.

What ever you decide to do Good luck

Contains_Mild_Peril · 18 October 2006 at 5:44PM

What fabric is it? Natural fibres (e.g. silk) are normally easier to dye, polyester being almost impossible for amateur dying, but silk is generally much harder to wash successfully. Polyester will easily tolerate gentle washing in the bath, and soaking with Oxy powder solution if necessary.
I would try to restore it as a full-length wedding dress rather than convert it to a shorter party dress, which would probably be worth considerably less. However, it's not the best time of year for selling wedding wear, which will tend to make more money in Spring.
If you look at eBay's completed listings for wedding and party/prom dresses, you'll get some idea of the potential differences in price.

rose_sparky · 18 October 2006 at 8:15PM

Bargainbabe wrote:

Well, is the work to restore it going to be worth it? Not only that if you do decide to sell it and its not up to scratch then you'll have a disgruntled buyer on your hands.

Me personally, I wouldn't bother and I would charity it-JMO.

I'm with you on this one.

Charity shop it and let someone else do the work!

kittiwoz · 18 October 2006 at 9:11PM

I can't give it to a charity shop. It is too damaged to sell in its current state. Money is currently too-tight to mention as the song goes so I'm prepared to put a lot of money in even if I don't get a great return on the time invested.

I don't know what fabric it is. There is no label. Is that usual for wedding dresses? I know synthetics dye badly. I was just thinking about that and I agree with VickyM that the thing to do is to test a sample of the fabric. If I take a bit from the skirt I'll have to convert it into a party dress though, assuming it does take the dye and if not I'll be stuffed. I can think of other places I could take a tiny snippet and fix it so it wasn't noticeable though. The dress has plastic pearl type buttons which I had assumed (perhaps overly optimistically) will not take dye at all. Maybe I should check one too. I could remove them and re-sew them later though it would certianly take a while.

I know generally wedding dresses make a lot more money than party dresses but I would obviously be honest about the dress having been damaged and refurbished so not in original condition. Likely not in perfect condition either. Also the style of the dress is very eighties. It has leg o' mutton arms, a sweetheart neckline, a full, floor-length skirt with train, swirled fabric roses all around the neckline and a big fabric bow at the rear. It is a thick cream/ivory coloured brocade. Bit of a meringue really. Do you think anyone would want it as a wedding dress? I think it might do quite well as a party dress. I would dye the body of the dress black and the roses and bow magenta for ultra eightiesness. 80s stuff seems to go quite well and anything tied in with punk revivalism or emo.

Mrs_Sparkle · 18 October 2006 at 9:37PM

Hope you don't mind my honest feedback- I am a member of a wedding forum and can pretty much guarantee that no one would buy an 80s style dress to actually use as a wedding dress. Full skirts have come back into fashion but 99 out of 100 brides will have a strapless dress, either laced-up or zipped corset-style bodice and a full, but simply styled, skirt. Also the resale value on wedding dresses is pretty poor on eBay- to give you an idea I got my £250 dress on eBay for a BIN price of £40 and it still had the tags on.

I love your idea of dyeing the dress black and magenta and think you could make more money from selling it for fancy dress/partywear.

kittiwoz · 18 October 2006 at 10:14PM

Thanks. I had thought that might be the case. After all, it may have been expensive twenty years back but considering I bought in in Cancer Research for £12 before it was damp ravaged how much could anyone possibly be prepared to pay for it now? I will have to have a bit of a think on how to shorten it. It seems somewhat of a shame to cut the train away but I think it has to be done. Oooh! I just had a bright idea. Maybe I can save the cut away material to create a magenta sash. It does have a proper corset style bodice with a fairly stiff lining though it is not boned and that would emphasise the hourglass styling nicely as well as breaking up the expanse of black. I do hope it takes the dye and that I can bear to part with it once I make it look cool. It's probably as well it is a bit big for me!

Mrs_Sparkle · 18 October 2006 at 11:08PM

You're going to have to post a photo of the finished dress- I'm intrigued now. You certainly sound like you have a talent for altering things.

kittiwoz · 18 October 2006 at 11:18PM

It may be more blind optism! I am used to taking things up and making mends and I've made minor alterations and dyed things before but this will certainly be my largest project to date. It may turn out to be overly ambitious but given the current state of the dress I don't really feel I have to worry about making it any worse so I reckon it is worth a go.

Contains_Mild_Peril · 19 October 2006 at 12:14AM

Mrs_Sparkle wrote:

Hope you don't mind my honest feedback- I am a member of a wedding forum and can pretty much guarantee that no one would buy an 80s style dress to actually use as a wedding dress. Full skirts have come back into fashion but 99 out of 100 brides will have a strapless dress, either laced-up or zipped corset-style bodice and a full, but simply styled, skirt. Also the resale value on wedding dresses is pretty poor on eBay- to give you an idea I got my £250 dress on eBay for a BIN price of £40 and it still had the tags on.

I love your idea of dyeing the dress black and magenta and think you could make more money from selling it for fancy dress/partywear.

I'm an occasional wedding photographer (so I check out my rivals' work frequently!) and still see plenty of brides wearing dresses with shoulders rather than strapless ones, though strapless may be marginally more popular. Sweetheart necklines are still very acceptable, but losing the leg o'mutton sleeves would be likely to make it more saleable.
Kittiwoz, good luck with it. If it's not in condition that a charity shop would take then your 2 main options are restore/refurbish it yourself or sell it on eBay in its current state as a restoration project: in the latter case, it would make peanuts. You should definitely test dye on a tiny test patch taken from an inside hem initially, rather than cut a big chunk off the bottom and possibly find that the dye won't take. If it does dye, a black and magenta retro party dress definitely has good potential. I'd keep it quite long if possible. If you look on eBay, you'll find long prom dresses making more money than shorter dresses. The fact that your revamped dress would be completely unique is a big selling point. If you know someone the right size to model it or could get someone to take photos of you modelling it, then photos of it on rather than on a hanger should help it make a decent price.

Refurbishing wedding dress for sale

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