Bridal Gowns Worth a 2nd Look : A Tustin consignment store sells wedding dresses that, for better or worse, have already made one trip to the altar.
For eight years she has kept her wedding gown neatly folded in a worn and faded blue box.
“I was saving it for my daughter,” she says, “but now that I’m getting divorced . . . . “
The woman has come to 2nd Look, a consignment store in Tustin’s old town that specializes in bridal attire, to see if she can sell the dress she no longer cherishes.
Bobbi Lane, owner of the boutique, has grown accustomed to stories of wedding bell blues or bliss. She’s all business as she studies the gown with a practiced eye.
“What size is it, hon’?” she asks, unfolding the ivory fabric and fingering the pearls around the bodice. The woman looks sheepish.
“Well, it was a Size 8, but two weeks before the wedding, I found out I was pregnant and had to have it altered.”
There’s a story behind every gown at the 2nd Look. The boutique sells used wedding dresses that, for better or worse, have already made one trip to the altar.
“Usually these dresses have been worn for four to six hours--that’s it,” Lane says. With luck, the dresses survive the ceremony and reception in mint condition. Many of Lane’s gowns look as if they’ve never been worn.
“Some haven’t been worn at all--the bride never got married,” Lane says.
She holds up a lacy white confection doused in beads and sequins.
“This girl paid $1,100 for this dress and never wore it.”
With the high cost of wedding attire, Lane has found brides eager to get some money back on their expensive dresses while brides-to-be are looking for affordable gowns.
Her boutique occupies a quaint 116-year-old building with pink clapboard and white wood trim on the outside and dried flowers and bows adorning the walls and archways inside.
In this old-fashioned setting, customers find two rooms filled with wedding dresses.
Lane has more than 100 bridal gowns in every style--Victorians with high-neck collars, Southern belle gowns with full skirts and plunging necklines trimmed in lace and fitted “mermaid” dresses that hug the hips and thighs and flare out at the knees. The gowns cost from $150 to $1,800 for dresses that originally ran as high as $2,600.
Dresses from prestigious bridal boutiques such as Jessica McClintock and Mon Amie turn up frequently.
“It’s a smart way for a bride to go,” Lane says. “She can probably save 30% to 50% on her gown, and use that money for a honeymoon or a bank account.
“I get a lot of people who are paying for their own weddings, and I get middle- and upper-income working women who want to shop smart.”
Hurried brides who can’t wait three months to order a dress in their size from a bridal shop can come here and buy one that fits off the rack. The gowns range in size from 3 to 18.
“We get some Las Vegas weddings,” Lane says. “If you need it, you can walk out with a dress the same day you try it on.”
Lane avoids gowns that look dated, and with few exceptions she accepts only those that are less than five or six years old. On the walls of her shop she tacks up photographs from recent bridal magazines of gowns she has on the racks.
On a recent visit one could find an immaculate white satin gown with a sweetheart neckline and cathedral length train adorned with lace and pearls for $725, and a floor-length off-the-shoulder white taffeta gown with ruffles and ribbons adorning the front and back for $395.
An old-fashioned bride could choose a high-neck Victorian gown with a beaded bodice for $575, while a modern bride could find a sophisticated taffeta gown with long sleeves, a straight floor-length skirt and an asymmetrical trim of fabric roses and lace across the front for $795.
Lane has about 100 headpieces, including, crowns, wreaths, juliet caps and hats. There’s a pearl-encrusted crown with a multilayered fingertip length veil for $139 or a more modest wreath of fabric roses for $55.
Betsy Robertson of Tustin found a wedding dress for her daughter Shannon and a mother-of-the-bride dress for herself at 2nd Look.
“My daughter’s on a budget and I knew she couldn’t afford a brand new gown,” Robertson says. “We found exactly what she was looking for and it was affordable.”
Her daughter’s white satin gown cost $375. Robertson figures her daughter saved about $300.
Tamara Hosey, another Tustin resident, spotted her wedding dress hanging in the shop window.
“I drove by and fell in love with it,” she says.
She paid $1,000 for the gown, veil and slip. She figures the gown, a Victorian-style dress made of ivory silk and lavishly decorated in sequins and beads, would have sold for about $1,800 new.
Lane also sells used career wear, after-five formals, mother-of-the-bride suits and dresses and bridesmaids’ gowns, some in sets of two or more. There’s a trio of powder blue taffeta dresses with puffed sleeves for $92 each, and off-the-shoulder tea length dresses in mint green taffeta for $88.
In April and May, high school girls sift through the racks of velvet, lace and taffeta for their prom dresses.
Lane opened the boutique 1 1/2 years ago, fulfilling a dream she’d had for 30 years to own her own shop.
“I started (selling used clothing) in my garage,” she says. “Then I saw this building for lease. It was perfect. Four months later, I took in a couple of bridal gowns. I loved working with the brides so I decided to expand my bridal line.”
No longer do all brides save their gowns in the hope that they will one day be worn by their daughters, she says.
“They’re not keeping their gowns as much,” she says. “They don’t want to store the dress 20 years and find out their kid doesn’t want to wear it. The tradition of handing down your gown doesn’t apply. Recycling is in with everything, even clothes.”
Instead of holding onto their gowns for sentimental reasons, brides get pleasure from seeing someone else enjoy their dresses, she says.
“And the next person really does fall in love with it.”
