Which website to choose??

by Jessica
(Dublin, Ireland)

I have searched lots of websites including

www.lightinthebox.com
www.inweddingdress.com
www.tiffanybridals.com
www.instyleweddingdress.com

I am just so afraid to purchase from them. I did read reviews on http://bridalbudget.wordpress.com/
which really gave me some hope and it seems to be the only reviews with proper pictures of wedding dresses.

I would really appreciate if anyone could tell me if I should buy from these online shops. I'm looking to get my wedding dress, bridesmaid dress and flower girl dresses.

X tanks X

Dublin, Ireland

Answer by Diane:

Hello Jessica,

Thanks for writing to us and asking about these wedding dress suppliers.

You are not alone in stressing out over which sites are good to order from, so I will let you know what I look for.

Communication - look on the site to make sure that you can readily get a hold of the supplier so that you can ask questions.

They should list a real mailing address, email address, telephone number and a lot of times they will have live chat as well.

I find that a lot of the cheap, scam wedding dress sites don't have a lot of ways to get in touch with them and they don't want to be found (no real mailing address/snail mail address).

Length of Time in Business - A lot of the poor wedding dress sites have been in business for just a short period of time whereas the good ones have been around for years.

Don't trust what they say on their website either. Instead check through Hubspot Website Grader which will tell you how long their website has been around.

I find that with a lot of the bad wedding dress websites when brides post enough bad reviews about them and business drops off, they just pop up again with another business name.


When checking a website with Hubspot, they will also show the website's Alexa ranking. The higher the number Alexa ranking the less traffic the site gets.

If I see a site that has only been online for 3 months, with low traffic but "thousands" of good reviews, then I know that it is highly unlikely that could be true.

Also, ask if the dresses that they show on their websites are the real dresses or knock-offs of the originals.

If they are knock-offs, they usually are bad copies with poor quality details that sometimes don't really end up looking like the picture they show on their website.

Return Policy - You must check on their return policy to see if they stand behind their product.

Sometimes, these cheap wedding dress suppliers look great on the surface, but when you check into their return policy, the reasons for returns are very limited and they charge a large restocking fee.

This means that even if they allow you to return the dress, by the time you spend the money on shipping charges (all the way to China), you will have very little left of your initial payment to the supplier.

Please be careful out there and go through my steps with each of the suppliers you asked about.

I personally find the American based suppliers such as Romantic Gowns, My Gowns.com, Plus Size Bridal more reliable and accountable.