Etsy: Your salvation from expensive bridesmaid dresses

I own about $600 worth of dresses that sort of fit.

Etsy.com saved me from adding another one to the collection.

The online marketplace of handmade goods has boomed since it launched a little more than a decade ago. I’ve ordered personalized glassware, screen-printed dish towels, stationery and hand-stamped bracelets from the website over the years, but I never expected to buy a bridesmaid dress on Etsy.

And now I wish every bride would do it this way.

I’m currently in the middle of my third appointment as a maid of honor, and, just last week, I received a beautiful package from a friend in Dallas who invited me to be a member of her bridal party. That wedding will be my fifth turn as a bridesmaid and, if I had to guess, I’ll serve in at least three more before I turn 30.

My first three brides were the epitome of reasonableness and generosity. The dresses were all modern, classy and, in theory, something I could wear again. American Express Spending and Saving Tracker last year estimated the average bridal party member would spend $166 to dress up for a 2016 wedding. Even though those first three dresses each retailed for more than that, the brides worked a portion of that price into their own wedding budgets. I only paid a fraction of that $600 tab.

My friends minimized the chaos of everything within their power.

But they couldn’t control how the dresses fit.

Ordering a traditional bridesmaid dress isn’t like going into a department store and picking something up off a rack. The stores usually stock one size of each dress, and then finding the right fit is left up to your measurements and a sizing chart that I’m not convinced any woman actually fits into.

Alterations can cost upwards of $100, and that’s a lot when the average bridal party member already spends $743 to attend a wedding, according to American Express.

My first dress was the closest fit. It only took a little double-sided tape to make it work. The second, a beautiful goldenrod chiffon party dress, was my favorite, but it was too big. Fortunately, my sewing-savvy aunt stepped in and made a few alterations.

But the third dress was too snug, and that’s where the real trouble came in.

I spent my friend’s wedding day in October feeling as though someone had wrapped lavender Duct tape around my lungs. It took just as many hands to get me into my dress as it took the bride to get into hers. Eventually, the other girls excused me from anything that involved bending at the waist, whether that meant keeping the bride’s dress off the ground or fetching the box of bouquets. My only real job was to make sure I wasn’t cringing when the photographer took the photos, and I’ve done the bridesmaid thing enough to know that’s not what my role should have been.

The dress made it through the photos and the ceremony, but by the reception the zipper was as pained as I was. It jammed when I tried to unzip it for a quick breather. It took my best friend, a pair of scissors and eight gawking strangers in the bathroom to get me out of that contraption.

That dress was fresh in my mind when Bride No. 4, the same goddess who’d cut me out of that lavender disaster, brought up the idea of Etsy as a source of dresses for her wedding.

Esty to the rescue

il_570xn-1072482163_5kt7She found an online shop with a five-star rating that had completed more than 40,000 sales. Almost all the dresses on the RenzRags’ Etsy page fell below that American Express average of $166. The bride ordered a swatch book for $5 so we could preview the fabrics and colors. The only downside was not being able to see the dresses in person.

But Etsy is part of a much larger retail shift away from brick-and-mortar shopping, and as the website has grown, arguably so has the appeal and acceptance of handmade things. Even Amazon.com has dedicated a portion of its website entirely to artisans and their products.

The reviews on RenzRags seemed solid, but I’d seen Etsy fails before. Those hand-stamped bracelets I’d ordered were cheap and feeble, and this wasn’t a $10 purchase. It came out at $98 each. We were betting on pictures and a very kind and attentive digital correspondence with a team in San Diego.

But at least we weren’t betting on a sizing chart.

The team took our individual measurements, and the dresses were made to fit us, something no other company I know of would do this inexpensively. The seamstress also promised to leave an extra inch of fabric in the dress at the seams in case any of them needed to be let out a little.

They arrived within a month of ordering them, and they were beautiful. They matched the photos. Most importantly, they fit.

I won’t need double-sided tape, my aunt or fleet of bridesmaids to keep me in this dress.

I’m genuinely breathing easy, which is important. I’ve got a toast to give at this wedding, and I imagine my best friend will be too busy getting married to cut me out of another dress.

After three less-than-perfect dresses — what a relief.

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