- Avarna Jain,
Chairperson RPSG Lifestyle Media
What To Do With Your Wedding Dress After Tying The Knot?
Your beautiful wedding outfit deserves better than just lying in a trunk and collecting dust. Just saying.
Ladies, we know you love your wedding outfit and would love to wear it again and again and again. In a perfect world, you would be able to wear your wedding outfit to a brunch with your girlfriends or a trip down to the grocery store. There’s only so much you can do with your 14 kg wedding outfit after it has served its purpose.
Image credit: Alanna Panday
But, such a great amount of craftsmanship and labour goes into making a bridal outfit that it feels criminal to just dump it in a trunk after one use. If you’re completely clueless about what to do with your wedding dress after the big day, we’ve compiled a comprehensive guide to all your options after you’re done wearing it for the ceremony…
Everything You Can Do With Your Wedding Dress After The Ceremony
Donate it
It’s very rewarding to have your wedding dress help a bride who might not be able to afford it otherwise. There are many women out there who dream of wearing a beautiful wedding outfit but do not have means for it. You can choose to help them by donating your wedding outfit. That way, somebody gets a beautiful outfit for their wedding, and you end up feeling good about yourself. That’s killing two birds with one stone!
Sell it/rent it
Wedding dresses cost a bomb, so you might as well make some money out of it. And what’s more, that way your wedding dress can be a part of another bride’s big day as well. Selling your wedding dresses is a no-brainer. But if you’re not ready to part with your wedding outfit (understandable), but still might want to make some money off it, you can put it up for rent. You might be surprised by how many brides out there are looking to rent their wedding outfits as opposed to buying them. There are a lot of platforms in India where you can sell your wedding attires or put them up for rent, some of them are mentioned below:
Revivify
Revifyis a platform where you can easily sell your wedding attire. They have really simplified the whole process of selling your wedding outfit, wherein all you have to do is make a seller account, and submit your listing, after which their team will help you value your outfit, and put up the listing on their website. Another good thing? They accept a plethora of designers.
Flyrobe
If the sentimental value that your wedding outfit holds is keeping you from selling it, you can still make some cash off it by putting it up for rent on Flyrobe, which is one of India’s leading fashion rental platforms. Once you sign your outfit up for rent, the Flyrobe will take care of everything—they will have it picked up from your place, have it dry cleaned and get it delivered to their new temporary home. It’s that easy!
Kuro India
Kuro is a platform where you can both sell your wedding outfit and put it up for rent. (Bonus: you can also put your shoes and bags up for rent).
Rent An Attire
Rent an Attireis another platform where you can put your wedding outfits up for rent. All you have to do is pick the outfit you want to rent out and upload pictures of the outfit along with its details on their website. When someone rents out your outfit, you will earn a certain percentage of the rental price, based on the quality of the garment.
Loved Lehenga
Loved Lehengais an online marketplace to sell your wedding lehenga. It is a platform where you can showcase your outfits to a global market, which increases the chances of selling it at the best possible price.
The Stylease
The Stylease is a rental platform where you can sell your wedding outfit, and your groom’s outfit as well. Didn't wear a designer lehenga? No problem. They even accept non-designer outfits!
Pass it down
Considering the sentimental value that a woman’s wedding outfit holds, it’s only fair if you want your daughter to inherit it and wear it on her wedding day. By passing down your wedding outfit, you can start a family tradition. Wearing a wedding dress that has been passed down through generations is a beautiful way to feel connected to your roots. Most daughters (and granddaughters) would love to own a piece of their family’s history.
Image credit: Kriti Kharbanda
Just make sure to store your outfit carefully to preserve it for your daughter. To make the best out of this arrangement, they can modernise the outfit a little for it to better suit the times, while still retaining the original essence of the garment, so everybody ends up happy. The outfit can be revamped by adding a more contemporary veil, a trail, and an embellished jacket, the options are endless!
So go ahead, pass on your wedding outfit to your daughter, and let it be her ‘something old’. Who wouldn’t love to see their wedding outfit converted into an heirloom piece to be loved and cherished by posterity?
Repurpose it
Think you can’t wear your wedding outfit again because of how elaborate it is? Think again. There are a bunch of ways that you can re-wear your wedding outfit. How, you ask? Allow us to walk you through it…
Use the blouse with other lighter saris
Pair your heavily embroidered blouses with lighter, more minimalistic saris for a balanced look. This is a great wedding guest look, or even a Diwali party look.
Ditch the blouse for a shirt/a contemporary blouse
Who is stopping you from re-wearing your wedding lehenga? Just tone it down by pairing the skirt with a button-down shirt instead of its blouse, and there you have it. A perfectly balanced look involving your bridal lehenga which won’t make you look like a bride. You can also switch your blouse with another modern blouse. Instead of wearing it with your quintessential wedding blouse, you can have a separate blouse made especially for your wedding lehenga, that is more sexy, and effortless.
Use lehenga as a sari
Another way to wear your wedding lehenga (the full set) is to wear it as a sari. How you drape your dupatta makes a significant difference to the overall look. So instead of how you would normally wear the dupatta, drape it like you would for a sari. Still a bit OTT? Switch the dupatta with another lighter dupatta in a complementary colour.
Tone down your hair, makeup and jewellery
Remember when Alia Bhatt re-wore her Sabyasachi wedding sari for the National Film Awards? She did so by opting for more minimalistic hair and jewellery. And suddenly the outfit wasn’t as bridal. You too, might be surprised by how non-bridal your outfit looks when you decide to tone down your hair, makeup and jewellery.
Switch your dupatta with a jacket
Instead of wearing your lehenga with the dupatta, wear it with a long embroidered jacket with shoulder pads, that will give it a more contemporary, non-bridal look. Works like a charm.
So bookmark this for the next time you find yourself with a heavy couture lehenga with no place to go!
Where we give you a fast-paced look into everything you should wish list when you start to think about marriage. What to buy and how to dress, along with modern mithai and the homegrown fragrance makers to bookmark. Make special note of the feature on alta.
It has everything you need to make your wedding special. From the big comeback of red and pink in bridal wear to how the cool kids are wearing corsets to the celebration, there is only one way to get ready for a wedding —with enjoyment.
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This needs very little description. It has travel with a special focus on incredible India, and a collection of wedding albums, sourced randomly, but collected with abundance because happiness has no limits.
