Selling my wedding dress - help please

[SimplyRedHead]

Hi all

(also posted in 'chat')

I would like to sell my wedding dress but have no idea of the best way to do it.

I am a regular Ebayer and have used gumtree a couple of times.

I'm worried about it selling too cheaply on eBay. It's quite an unusual dress (it's red and very big - think Gone With The Wind).

Does anyone have any experience of selling their wedding dress? How did you do it? What percentage of the original cost did you get?

Are there any specialist agencies to sell to? I'm in London.

Thanks for your help

I've never sold a wedding dress (that'd be because I didn't have one, as such!) but I'd approach it much the same as any other eBay sale. Research completed listings for the kind of prices reached firstly. Then start thinking of all the things that could go wrong with such a sale. I've got many many years of eBay under my belt and feedback of around 3000 so I've pretty much seen it all.
Snags I can think of without really trying -

Lost/damaged in post

Buyer complains about size

Buyer wears the dress THEN finds a fault with it and demands a refund

Buyer damages dress but claims it was like that when it arrived

All of those things will find you forced by eBay to refund. Already to me it's looking like not worth the hassle.
So I'd do some research into selling elsewhere or to an agency.

Good luck!

I sold mine but it was 23 years ago. There was a wedding shop locally that sold new and second hand dresses. They did not buy it from me, but just had it in their shop and they took a percentage of the sale price.

a quick look found this one

I have bought a wedding dress second hand recently and spent sometime looking on ebay and other sites. I would go for one of the other sites - preloved.co.uk or stillwhite.co.uk. Much more like a 'traditional' second-hand listing in that it's standard for the buyer to contact the seller first and ask to try the dress on beforehand, which if you're spending that sort of money you really want to do. The whole ebay approach of auctioning unseen doesn't really work for wedding dresses, in my view (unless you want to put it on at rock bottom price -under£100).

Thanks guys.

I'm definitely thinking a dress agency might be the way to go. Similar dresses seem to go for around £60 on
eBay!!

Thanks for the link to stillwhite - looks great.

Think I will try there and Pre-loved first. Not sure whether to fix the dress (minor bead work) and dry clean first or leave to buyer ......

I would fix the beads carefully first. You won't have to list that fault then. See if other people on the site offer items dry cleaned. I guess if I was buying then I would like the dress cleaned but if you know it needs it then you factor in that expense when buying. Will probably cost about £20 to dry clean. I paid £18 recently for a long evening type dress.

I have just bought my wedding dress on eBay within the last week. I was the only bidder and it had no reserve on it so I got it for a very low price! However, I knew what I wanted and had tried on that designer's dresses before so was happy to buy without trying on.

Be prepared for it not to sell, I reckon over half of the dresses I was watching didn't sell or reach their reserve.

Good luck selling your dress, and put a reserve on it if you want a minimum price sale.

Thanks everyone.

Think I'll try a specialist site first and then eBay with a reserve.