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When ‘the Dress’ Turns Into 5 or 6

Posted On 12/16/2009 08:42:32 by SarahGloss

SARAH NIANOURIS found the perfect wedding dress. Then she continued shopping.

Why, she can’t say. But she fell in love with another, then another, then another. She now had four sashaying, cascading, lace-adorned, bead-bedecked and — not to be ignored in an economic downturn — way-over-her-budget gowns. She wasn’t marrying enough times to wear them all.

“I know: psycho,” she said. But she has plenty of company. Multiple wedding-dress purchases, are a trend in the wedding industry, if the anecdotes mean anything.

Ms. Nianouris (now Mrs. Sollar), a real estate broker in Dayton, Ohio, considers herself “very frugal.” She had budgeted $1,000 for her dress. She spent $800 on her first pick, a Sarah Danielle, then bought an elaborate, tiered tulle-and-lace Mia Solano for $1,000. Then she opted for handmade, setting her back $550 on the deposit. “When I put it on, I wanted to throw up,” she said.

Then she bought the winner, an Amsale sample gown, for $699, with $300 in alterations. She sold the first two on PreOwnedWeddingDresses.com for a loss of $650. It was a long journey to the right dress, but “I couldn’t have been happier,” she said.

Not that Mrs. Sollar spent much by today’s wildly priced wedding-dress standards, where something from the couturier Monique Lhuillier’s Platinum Collection can sell for upward of $20,000.

Annie Hunter of Seattle, who works in marketing for a nonprofit organization, reached more than half that total when she bought four dresses for her August wedding. She bought two at a sample sale in Seattle for $3,800 combined. She bought a third dress, an Amsale, online for $3,000. “It had pockets,” she said. “I wanted pockets.” She wore it to a small wedding ceremony she and her bridegroom held in Mexico, but felt it was a bit too revealing for her formal wedding. The fourth, and final, dress she bought at a shop in Seattle, a Monique Lhuillier for $3,400.

“My husband paid for the first two, I paid for the third, and my mother paid for the fourth,” she said. “Everyone contributed to the madness.”

But Mrs. Hunter’s mother was her cautionary tale. “She thought I was nuts,” Mrs. Hunter said. “But she hated the way she had looked on her wedding day, and she wanted me to have a more positive experience, which I did.”

Josie Daga, the owner of PreOwnedWeddingDresses.com, has labeled the phenomenon multiple-dress syndrome. “A two-dress wedding is old hat,” she said. “Easily 15 to 20 percent of our sellers are two-dress brides. But buying several dresses? This is new.”

Mrs. Daga points to dozens of brides who have shared their multiple-dress stories on her site, including a woman who bought seven dresses, and another who bought six.

“They are a little bit ashamed of it,” she said. “But with longer engagements and the excitement around the wedding industry, the dress is often the first thing they buy.”

And buy, and buy.

The phenomenon has not registered on the radar of the Wedding Report (theweddingreport.com), an online market research firm tracking all things wedding-related. “I’ll add it to our next survey,” said Shane McMurray, the firm’s chief executive.

Multiple wedding-dress purchases are part of what continues to be a high level of spending on weddings, a $40-billion-plus industry according to information from the Association of Certified Professional Wedding Consultants and a number of other industry groups.

Amber Schneider of Boston, who bought a mere two gowns, saw her wedding as a once-in-a-lifetime event.

“My husband and I will be paying this wedding off for years and years to come,” said Mrs. Schneider, a hospital social worker. “I felt guilty about it, but at the same time, I wanted to feel beautiful on my wedding day.”

It is a sentiment that has certainly helped the resale industry. Sales at the pre-owned dress site are “fabulous,” Mrs. Daga said.

“The recession has helped the business, because it’s crazy what a wedding dress costs,” she said. “If you can get a dress that looks essentially new, or sell your dress and get some money back, why wouldn’t you?”

The buyers put their money in a holding account provided by the Web site, so the sellers do not receive the money until the buying brides sign off on the dresses.

Whatever their reasons for buying in bulk, brides said love of a wedding dress, then ultimate rejection of it, did not reflect on their decision-making capabilities regarding a husband.

“Oh, no,” Mrs. Sollar said, laughing. “He’s different. I love him to death.�

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