Buying wedding items from China

Thanks for this. I'm planning on buying my dress and this is really helpful

I haven't bought my dress from China, but I have bought quite a lot of smaller bits from Chinese Ebay sellers (table runners, sweet scoops, favour bags etc) and they are all lovely quality. The sellers are really polite too.

Im sorry but a lot of what this lady is saying is utter **** (and I dont use any four letter words generally).

The fact that she lives with unicorns (all bought from ebay of course) should tell you about her credentials to write an article on purchasing the most important dress of your life!

What she doesnt mention is that the dress you see on the picture WILL NOT be the dress you receive. These companies simply download pictures from designer websites and produce cheap copies of the dresses....this little "beauty" is the latest to be doing the rounds. The dress on the left is by Berta, an Israeli designers who's dresses are in the thousands but if you saw them close up you would understand why. What an earth made the buyer think they could get the same for a couple hundred quid is beyond my comprehension.

Hi, I got my wedding dress and 2 bridesmaid dresses from china. I done my research on the seller of my dress, I got her to send me photos of the actual dress I would get ad not the photo of the dress they would copy. I am really happy with the dress I have theirs only a couple of minor details that are not the same but that actually looks better for me an everyone is shocked it was only £50!

My bridesmaid dresses are beautiful and an exact copy of the photo displayed on the listing.

All 3 dresses are really well made BUT I do think I got lucky, really lucky!

I have seen photos of some monstrosities and their are some clueless people out there who think they will get the dress pictured for a few quid.

I did not expect my Chinese-eBay-Seller dress to be exactly like the dress in the picture. I was fully aware of the horror stories (as depicted in your image above), and buying my dress was a complete gamble. BUT I could not have afforded to spend thousands on a dress anyway, so my only real option was the high street. And having spent weeks looking, I couldn't find exactly what I wanted.

My mum researched the eBay sellers, choosing one that had exceptional feedback, and had a good policy on returns. As a result I am very happy with my dress that cost £100, and if I'd have seen it in a shop for 5 or 6 times the price I'd have paid it.

Understandably, some of these sellers can get away with ripping you off as the sheer distance makes it impossible to make an effective complaint. Furthermore, it is possible that as a result of Chinese-eBay dresses, boutiques like yours loose some business. But, as I said, I would not be able to afford to buy from a bridal shop anyway, as dresses are often more than 10x the price of mine, so you've not lost a customer here.

I think that if brides are aware that buying cheap dresses is a gamble, then there is nothing wrong with it, as long as you do research first to make sure that it's a safer bet.

On the contrary, I unfortunately get MORE business from customers who are the unlucky ones and receive utter rubbish packed in an A4 jiffy bag than I have ever had before! I think if you are on the slender side (although the bride in the green dress looks nowhere near large), then it MAY be a risk worth taking but my brides are at least a size 16 with my largest lady being a size 38. They need support, structure, tailoring and good quality fabric, everything that the ebay dresses lack. As for price, I currently have dresses that were originally £1400 hanging on the sale rail in the shop ready for next week that are going for £250 so its always worth researching this avenue too.

I think its about time we had a "Successful Chinese Dress" gallery as every time it is mention there are lots of ladies who are very pleased with their purchases, bearing in mind the cost, but as yet nobody has been prepared to share their pictures :-(

I would show a picture of my dress but it needs taking up, I will defo post it after my wedding!

??

Sure, I'll upload some pics after the wedding too. I did upload one on a previous thread, but the dimensions were all wrong, so it made me look really wide! I'll have to play around with it after the wedding.

I haven't bought any wedding stuff from ebay yet, but I go to a lot of dinner functions as part of my work, so I have to wear a lot of ballgowns/evening dresses. There's an unspoken rule that women don't wear the same dress twice around the same guests, and ballgowns are expensive, so I buy all of my dresses from Chinese sellers on eBay. Ok, the quality is probably not equivalent to a dress costing hundreds or thousands of pounds, but all the dresses I have had have been easily as good as anything I'd buy "off the peg" in the UK and better than expected. My favourite buy was a dress covered in crystals with five underskirts and a fully boned corseted bodice for £100 inc p&p. I had to cut a few layers of tulle out because it was a little TOO big, but I've worn it several times over the years and it always wows people. It fits beautifully.

In fact, I've been so pleased with my dresses I now hunt out Chinese sellers on ebay when I want an item that's a little different for work, a party or a day out. As long as you check the feedback, check (or take) your measurements carefully, and have someone that you are able to go to for alterations (I've needed the bust taking in on one or two dresses), it should be fine.

That said, I agree that if you are classed as "plus size", then Chinese sellers on ebay probably aren't for you. Chinese women have VERY different proportions to Western women (for example, their shoulders are narrower in relation to their bust - as a guide I would need to buy a size small or medium from China/Korea to fit my bust, but an XXL to fit my shoulders). I'm sure everyone here knows they're generally also much smaller than Western women, but as a size 10 I'm an L-XL in Asia. They have little to no practical experience of accommodating larger Western shapes, so as Embrace Bridal says you can't be certain that they will be able to provide the support for a large bust or give the illusion of slimming a larger waistline. Some of them are very good - I have seen a few size 18+ women whose dresses were from China and looked amazing - but you have no guarantees, and returning for a refund is pretty much a non-starter once you take into account the cost of posting back to them.

I've worked it out! My lace dress, from a Chinese seller on eBay. I tried on similar ones in the UK in high street and bridal shops. The nicest one was very similar to my one pictured below, but 7x the price at £700. I wanted a simple lace dress but found it immensely difficult to find one in my price range (I was willing to go up to about £500 max). As I said, my mum bought a few from eBay after doing some research, and I ended up with the dress below. You can see my bra strap in the 2nd picture, but I've got a new one now, and the dress is a bit crumpled in the picture, but it's been hanging up in my mum's house for months now, so hopefully they will have come out. Here's me trying it on:

This one is not a dress from a Chinese seller, but it shows you can get a bargain in the UK too! I was shopping for summer dresses in TK Maxx and this was on the rail. It looked hideous on the hanger (I think because of the ruching making it hang funny) and I just tried it on out of curiosity, and perhaps to send a dodgy picture to my mum and insist I'd found a 'better' dress. So, I was pleasantly surprised when I actually put it on! I had to get it dry cleaned as the edges looked a little grubby due to being on the shop floor for so long, but other than that it was pretty perfect!

I've decided to wear the lace for the main events of the day (the ceremony and our canal boat reception) and then change into this second dress for casual drinks in the beer garden we've found in Primrose Hill afterwards. And guess the price of this second one... £25!! So, since my first was about £100, in total I've spent about £125 on two dresses! In fact, the ivory suit jacket I got from Zara yesterday to wear in case it's a chilly evening, cost £50 ... double the price of this dress!!!! Kerching!!

Hope this is helpful. As I said before, don't throw money away, be cautious. If you research the seller, contact previous buyers to ask their opinion, perhaps buy more than one dress to choose from and sell the others on, then you're more likely to be a happy budget-bride. By all means, if you've got a thousand pound or few to spend on a dress and can afford it, then go to a nice boutique, drink champagne and try on lots of dresses. But if, like me, you don't have the budget and begrudge paying for a white/ivory dress that in any other colour would be a tenth of the price, then consider looking at Chinese sellers. I will be starting my married life with nothing to pay off from the wedding, and this will put us in a position to get a mortgage. I'm so excited about my wedding day, it's unreal, and I want it to all be perfect, but it's what happens afterwards that holds more weight. The marriage is the most important part. Saving on my dress has made starting our married life just a fraction easier.

ToBeMrsHouse, what a wonderful story with such a happy and amazing ending! You have definitely made me consider Chinese sellers.