Hiring wedding dresses..opinions?

I personally wouldn't hire one, I'd be worried about finding one to fit me perfectly. If you're worried about the cost then look at sample sales. I got mine from a sample sale for £550 instead of £1400, but they had them starting from £99. Also the highstreet is fab for wedding dress, coast, debenhams and bhs have some lovely ones.

If you did decide to buy one you could sell it afterwards. I'm thinking about doing this with mine but don't know how i'll feel about letting it go when the time comes x

Hi

I thought the exact same you wear it only for one day! But I must admit I would like to keep it. I've only been looking on net so far at dresses. My sister inlaw had bought her dress wasnt that deer and was lovely, she has now a year on had a baby girl. She decided to alter herr wedding dress into a lovely white dress for her daughter and had a naming day for her little girl.i thought that was a lovely idea xx

When I got married the first time, I got my dress cleaned and boxed afterwards and it is still sitting in the loft!! I haven't looked at it or anything. I thought about hiring for this time around, but found it would cost nearly as much to hire as it is to buy, so I have bought again....and no doubt it will sit in the loft with the last one...lol.

Some people do make use of their dresses and use the material for christening their first child or something similar like that. x

I would have thought that if you were willing to hunt you could track down a dress in a sample sale for a similar price to hiring and as someone else said if you hire you won't be able to have amendments. It depends if you are fairly in proportion, or like myself with a much larger bottom than up top!!

I did a quick online search though and this place popped up. They have high end (think Packham) dresses for 1 week hire for around £400-£600 and also a lovely selection of accessories! A great way to get the special bit's you otherwise couldn't justify. It hadn't even occured to me you could hire a sparkly belt or veil as these are the bits that tend to really add onto the cost.

http://www.tohaveandtohire.net/home.html

Hiring isn't cheap but it can be a cheaper way of getting to wear the dress you want but can't afford. My concern is that sometimes dresses look hired if you know what I mean. They can't be tailored just for you as easily and as you only get it for a very short period, if you pick it up and it's not right you're stuffed.

sample sales can be a great avenue as can buying a preloved dress via eBay or similar. There's also quite a lots of bridal outlet type places opening up now and they can have some great bargains too. I don't think it's a set answer tbh, it could be right for you, especially if you find somewhere like the link that was kindly posted, that place is lovely, but I think finding a great dress hire place isn't easy. X

Before you go down the route of hiring, make sure you check out the prices of them to buy. I bought mine in the sale at a nice boutique wedding dress shop for just £400, they hold it until i'm ready for the alterations, which they do as well. You can pick up some bargains if you're prepared to look in the sales. Whatever you decide, good luck.

I paid £90 on the weekend for mine from BHS - before committing to hire one, it's worth looking on the high street.

But, I'd hire a dress if I couldn't find one, I'm donating this one to a charity who provides weddings for terminally ill brides and grooms once I've finished wearing it.

I bought my dress in a sample sale for £250 and it's really lovely. I've paid £50 in alterations. If you know what style you're after there's plenty of sites to hunt through such as; preloved, bride2bride, sellmyweddingdress to name but a few. If you have a reasonable budget such as £400 you really will find something to buy, it helps if you buy one with a lace up back as that gives you and inch or 2 either way. Don't forget to come back and let us know, good luck.

We looked into hiring for our daughter as she wasn't sentimental about keeping it afterwards. After a long search in our area, we only found one place which was still a long way away that did hire. The look of them on the website was dreadful. Very old fashioned and obviously well worn and quite grubby looking. The prices were a shock too - starting prices from £300 for the day and we had to collect and return. In the end, we bought hers with the intention of selling it on afterwards. Although she loved her dress, she doesn't particularly like wedding dresses full stop so wanted to sell it on so we could recoup some of the money we paid. However, on the day, it got ripped by various pairs of stilletoes on the hem on the dance floor and can't be repaired so since the big day, it's been lying in the bag on a spare bed at Grandma's. The verdict - you can probably buy a new one for the same price as hiring or a sample for probably less!

There is a third option - have you looked at a preloved dress? I got mine for £100 - only worn once and the fit is almost perfect. Even with alterations it will cost me way way less than a new one or a hired dress and it is the dress of my dreams. I would suggest you find out what kind of dress you want to wear, then see what styles suit you by going and doing a bit of dress shopping, then see what is available in your price range either preloved or in the sales before you consider hiring x

It depends, when my cousin got married she was reluctant to splurge on a dress she'll only wear once, but she actually got herself a bargain of a dress from a place called the wedding dress factory outlet. All the dresses there are under £449 or something like that. Hiring a dress will cost something very similar to this. It was a gorgeous dress too!

Here's the link if you're interested - http://weddingdress-factoryoutlet.co.uk/

I researched hiring as I didn't feel sentimental about 'owning' the dress afterwards (my jimmy choos are another thing though - they will be prising those out of my cold dead hands!!) but there are actually very few places that hire out dresses and the cost starts at around £300. The ones which were nice dresses were so far away it would be a real pain to pick up and drop off. And there are no alterations available as you aren't buying the dress it's whatever the fit is like. If you are a standard size and live near a good hire shop you might be lucky. I'm trying on this weekend to get a feel for sizes and styles which suit and then I'm keeping an eye on ebay and preloved. There are tons of 'only worn once' beautiful dresses for less than half their original price. If not I will buy new and selling afterwards.

Thank you everyone for your responses, you've pretty much echoed what I was already thinking, but I'm glad you've all backed me up so I don't feel like such a brat!

I was probably only ever going to spend £400-800 on a dress anyway so it doesn't look as if I'd save much/anything by hiring! I'll definitely keep an eye out for sample sales, I hadn't thought of that so thank you!

Hi Louise.coe93 - I got my dress from Preloved. I fell in love with a £1200 dress but there's no way I could have afforded that. I tracked one down on Preloved for less than 1/2 price. I intend to sell in on afterwards making the dress even cheaper for me x

With a £400 - £800 budget you could definitely manage plenty of dresses from bridal stores or wherever you fancy. There are so many sales on too, my dress shop are always holding sales and dresses start from £200 and are stunning.

If not buying new i'd personally rather go down the pre loved route than hiring.

As I say though with that budget you'll find something you love i'm sure!

Hi all,

I'm new to this Hitched website! Not sure how to use everything just yet.

Does anyone know where I can buy a wedding dress in Surrey? please.

I was hoping to hire mine but didn't manage to find a single place that allowed you to near me, in the end I got mine from a bridal shop with a sale section for £99 brand new, you can deffiently tell it's not a £500 dress but it's new and I get to keep it so I'm ok with it! So I'd keep searching too! Look into factory outlet shops too, one I went to had loads of lovely ones for your budget and less

I had a bit of a rushed wedding. I found the whole dress shopping thing stressful due to the time limit. The only dress I felt happy in (if I'd had more time i'd have gone on a proper diet) when I tried some on was over 3k. It was a gorgeous jenny packham one. I researched hire then I searched pre-loved and went to see one which turned out to be the right dress but in a different colour. I put up a wanted as and a bridal shop replied. I did buy it and had to do about 20 hours of re-beading myself (I was fine with that) and pay £250 for a local seamstress (london prices!) to turn it up. On the day the bottom did get a bit trashed as I and other people stood not the bottom and crushed the beads. If I'd hired it I assume I wouldn't have been able to turn it up and I have no idea what would have happened about the bottom bit - I guess I would have been charged quote a lot of money for the repairs. It's now in my dad's house and one day when I'm feeling flush I will pay for it to be dry cleaned (wish I'd done that straight away). I did say I might sell it but I just don't want to, not that it's very sellable in it's current state.

I think hiring wedding dresses can be a bit of a false economy unless you're tall and perfect bride shape.