Is there anything on which more money is spent and wasted than wedding gowns? I’m not snarking or complaining, I LOVE them but really, you just have to eyeroll at the millions of dollars we collectively “wasted” through the years. I don’t know one single person who used someone else’s or bought used or used their mom’s or other relative’s. Mine is packed away upstairs. I may as well get it down, unpack it and play in the mud in it. (ha! as if I could get in it!) LOL. And well, like most of us, my dress was THE most beautiful one ever, you know. ; )
I just can’t understand why my fdils wouldn’t want to use it???
I used my mom’s which was made by my grandmother.
I know I spent less on my dress than some of my friends for the same reason. However, I know several people who wore hand me down wedding dresses - one dress was over 30 years old. And one engaged friend bought a house and found a fairly new wedding dress in the attic that the previous owner presumably had forgotten (or not!). She had that dress altered and wore it.
I think your future DIL’s should be able to choose what they want to wear at their weddings. It would certainly be nice of you to offer your dress, but be prepared for them to decline your offer.
I would love to get rid of mine. I just need to throw it in the car and drop it off at Goodwill. It is very frilly and 80ishy. I doubt that Goodwill would even want it. My dd just bought a lovely tea length gown from a David’s sample sale for $100. She’s one smart cookie!
My youngest D says she would rent a dress in a heartbeat - she says as long as it’s one she loves for the day, no need to have it after the day is over. I can’t disagree with that thought!!!
I still have mine packed away. My hope is that it might someday be cut up with at least some element of it incorporated into a christening gown for a future grandchild.
@Hoggirl – LOVE that idea! Thanks for mentioning it.
Mine was never properly cleaned and stored and so it got moldy - I took off one piece of lace to save and threw the dress away - no regrets
@Onward our flagship Goodwill would sure take it. Every November, it has a huge “Glitter Sale” of formal dresses, including wedding dresses, and people start lining up the night before! There are also always a few dresses-some “vintage” for sale most of the time in the “regular” dress section. I’ve seen people buying them.
@Hoggirl , my sister made her wedding dress (she is an expert seamstress), then recut the top to wear with a winter dressy skirt she made, later she recut the bottom and made a different kind of skirt from THAT, and finally, several years later, made a Sunday dress for her D out of the remains. If ever a wedding dress was put to good use, THAT was.
I do know someone who wore her own mother’s wedding dress years later. But I think it’s not too common. So many young ladies think that you have to “Say Yes to the (very expensive, over-the-top) Dress” that tailoring or altering a lovely vintage piece never occurs to them.
Actually, my younger D who is getting married in 3 months, chose a bridal full length skirt and separate bridal lace top. She keeps saying, “I know I’ll wear the top again!” She recently brought this up when in shock at the cost of the alterations.
My mom got married in one of her work suits. Even if my mom had worn a dress that she could pass down, my mom and I are physically very different. I am several inches taller, my hips are wider, and my chest is about 4 cup sizes bigger than what she was at her wedding. The alterations would’ve been extensive.
My wedding gown cost somewhere between $200 and $300. I donated it after I was done with it. No reason to keep it around and I hope someone else gets good use out of it 
I wanted to go the rental route but my weight was really all over the place and you couldn’t alter the rentals- that was the only reason I didn’t choose that option.
My mother’s wedding gown was a beautiful "50’s confection with a tiny waist and a huge skirt. I couldn’t have worn it but I wish it was still around. My Dad threw it out!
My grandmother’s wedding dress was narrow and satin and a beautiful late 1920’s style. Oh, Downton Abbey, where are you? It was too small for me by the time I was 12, but I wish I still had it. My mother sold it at a garage sale!
But the best dress of all was when my mother was Maid of Honor for her friend Helen, and that marriage was just before her own. Deep blue velvet, huge skirt, strapless and absolutely gorgeous. We just can’t easily find fabric like that anymore and these people were all middle class and ordinary. My sister and I would put on that blue dress, hold it against our torso, and spin around and around until we fell over with dizziness. The giant skirt would swoosh out, becoming perfectly horizontal except it would form waves as you spun. I learned more about physics from that dress! Sold at a garage sale - what a damned shame. Some things are worth carting around with you.
Would have loved to have worn my mother’s dress, if only for the fact that it would have meant I would have been size 2–which I definitely wasn’t- dang. My dress is still in the hermetically sealed box from 30+ years ago. Nothing that my D would wear. Assuming it’s still ok, I had also planned to have christening outfits made from it.
My wedding gown was $150, with free alteration. The alteration wasn’t perfect but was good enough for my purposes. I’d like to offer the lace for a veil or pillow for the wedding rings, perhaps.
One of my best friends dry-cleaned and wore her mom’s gown (she was the only D). The gown was white satin–had some cream age spots but the bride looked radiant and wore it proudly and is still happily married 35 years later.
D has never fit my size and none of us has ever fit mom’s size. D is a 0 to 00 and I am many sizes larger. 
I wore my mom’s wedding dress - tea length, strapless, made from ivory file, very simple but stunning in its own way. Mom and I were both non-frilly kind of people. I had to let it out, but found enough fabric somewhere (maybe from the hat-thingy that held the veil? since my mom’s veil caught fire at her reception and my dad had to put it out, I couldn’t use that again…) to do a sort-of ok job at expanding the back a bit. Looked good from the front, anyway.
Still have it, it’s 65 years old. Not at all my niece’s style, unfortunately, and she’d have to take it in, and then some. Guess the kids will findmit when we’re gone, in its little box in the closet.
I got married in 1986 and I still laugh about the fact that I took out my first loan to pay for it. A whopping $1200!! (yes, you read that right, just 2 zeroes)
Got married at mom’s house (a historical house, with an appropriate stairway; my mom actually widened a doorway, with her own hands (and power tools), so the guests in the living room would be able to see me come down the stairs). We had a reception there (family and close friends cooked the food). Costs were rings, flowers, cake, champagne & bar, invitations. I made the 3 bridesmaids’ dresses, short red silk wrap dresses, that I’d hoped they could wear again. We had no photographer, just snapshots. Brother-in-law played the music. No dancing, since hubby hates to dance, just soft jazz and mingling.
We’ll celebrate our 30th next week.
My wedding dress cost me all of $69.99 new. The entire wedding all included was under $2K. I made the cake.
But then we went to Hawaii for 12 days!
A friend wore her mother’s dress, although the tulle skirt had to be remade.
In April, the Ladies’ Auxiliary at our church had a wonderful tea/fashion show of bridal gowns. Some were from the early 1900s, and the stories were so interesting. Hot days in August, a dress made by the future MIL. I think they had 14 or so modeled by the youth group, and a few were tiny, with a 12 year old model and no way they’D fit a normal sized bride of today. One family displayed 3 dresses, and all brides (I think it was grandmother, mother, daughter) were married Dec 27, so the dresses were a beautiful white velvet and other winter fabrics. There was one from the 70’s with wedding cowboy boots and hat. For some they displayed the wedding photo album, for one the cake topper. It really was very interestingand a lot of fun.
My daughter’s godmother bought a simple dress with a nice embroidered train which she didn’t use. She was supposed to give it to me to make daughter’s first communion dress, but had the wedding dress cleaned and stored in a sealed box, so I didn’t get the train. Now the box sits. The dress will never be used again.
My best friend from 3rd grade had her mom’s wedding dress in her dress up box. Best mom ever to let us play with it!
My mom was married just after WWII ended, and she wore a white skirt suit with a pillbox hat - apparently quite fashionable at the time for war brides. My sister wore her MIL’s shiny satin dress - had it altered because MIL was quite tall and large boned. The seamstress did a terrible job and the dress absolutely hung on her. When I saw her in it on the morning of the wedding, I couldn’t believe it, but it was too late to do or say anything about it. She was completely oblivious that it dragged her down and looked terrible.
I cringe whenever I look at the pictures, but mostly because her husband turned out to be a dreadful person who left her penniless with three kids.
My dress went into the dress up trunk. My daughters and their friends enjoyed it for several years. I suggested snipping off a little lace to use somewhere when they eventually marry but there was no interest.