How to Optimize Your Listing

Think of your dress listing like an advertisement being read by someone who doesn't know anything about your dress.  The more information, detail and pictures you can provide, the more likely someone will contact you.

Price it Right

The best way to determine what your preowned or used wedding dress is worth is to start with a few factors: the designer, the age, the condition and the original price.

Here are some guidelines we suggest:

• New gowns (those never used as samples) should start at least 25% off of the original price
• Sample gowns should start at 15-25%off of the sample price paid
• Used gowns, less than 2 1/2 years old, in excellent condition, should start at 50% off of the retail price

Other factors:

• Age of the gown is extremely important. If your dress is more than 2 1/2 years older, your price should reflect it. For example, if your gown is more than 5 years old, best pricing starts at 65% off of retail.  If your gown is more than 10 years old, best pricing starts at 80% off of retail.
• If the dress has stains, tears or other defects the price reduction should be in accordance with the imperfection.
• Dress alterations (such as adding a bustle) can add value to your gown since a buyer would have to pay additional for it at retail.

If after a few weeks, you find you aren't getting the traffic or inquiries you had hoped for, consider reducing your price.  A reduction of $100 or more will place your gown on our New This Week page and will add a "Price Reduced" banner for 30 days.

Use Great Pictures

Your pictures are the best way to showcase your wedding dress.  Ideally, your listing will contain images of the full front and back of your gown.  And close ups of any detail.  Pictures on an actual person will give a much better idea of the dress than a hanger.  And buyers always want to see the actual dress being sold in the listing.

For your thumbnail or preview image (the one that will appear in search results), it is best to use a single image of your wedding dress (instead of a composite of two or three different pictures).

Give Detailed Information

More is definitely better.  So include information about the fabric, the details, your measurements, the alterations and if/how the gown was cleaned or preserved. Assume that a buyer won't know anything about your dress unless you tell her.

Be sure to fill out all fields (like silhouette, neckline etc).  Buyers may be searching only by these criteria, so if they aren't filled in, your dress won't return in their search.  Not sure what some of the categories are?  Visit our Wedding Dress 101 page.

And don't forget to include your zip (postal) code.  Without it, your dress won't return in local area searches which are done by zip code.

Full disclosure is important

Hopefully it goes without saying, but full disclosure is very important.  Revealing any imperfections about your dress will prevent any issues as your transaction progresses.

We recommend escrow.com

Escrow.com is a secure payment service that protects both the buyer and the seller.  Read more about how the service works and why we recommend it here.